Crimes against humanity
by psykotic addiction
Summary: Picks up after the events of 'Humans Strike Back'. The war between human and youkai is over. Peace is in sight, but dangerous secrets have been unearthed. The world has been shaken by Conspiracy, Lies, and Secrets. The enemy has changed. No longer do we humans face spirits and monsters that wish to burn our homes. We face each other.
1. What do you believe?

**xxXxx**

What do you believe?

People often say things such as 'history is written by the victors', 'History isn't what happened in the past, but what everyone agreed on what happened', and other similar quotes.

So it's easy to see that many people know that many things they're being told are either lies, partial truths, or intentional distortions of real events. This is the genius of government secrets. They can't truly hope to fool the very people they've educated into believing every lie they sell. So what they do instead is that they tell you a story and remove any evidence that could be clearly used to show the contrary. A statement that can't be disproved is often seen as the truth after all.

The problem occurs when the truth of the matter resurfaces, and not always in a manner that can be readily interpreted.

A few years ago, an Egyptian dictator had always maintained power by feeding lies to the people about a variety of subjects. He informed them of how much better off they were than the rest of the world, how prosperous they were, and how thankful they should be to have a man like him in power. His rule was completely safeguarded from the rest of the world, as he practiced isolationist policies to maintain his grip on political power. If no one could arrive in his country to prove him wrong, then his lies could never be brought to light. All means of communication were tightly guarded by his secret police as well. Egypt was seemingly impossible to reach from the outside.

Then along came the invention of the internet.

The Egyptian dictator did everything in his power to try and close down the internet: attempting to censor every website that allowed interaction between people outside of Egypt, taxing computer sales at absurdly large prices, and everything in between. Regardless, the Egyptian people eventually found out through the use of the computer that their dictator was lying to their faces about everything, and they riot to this day against his rule.

As society advanced, normal people became more and more capable of communicating with each other. Civilians from different nations could more easily speak to each other, and even compare notes between what goes on in each other's countries. As this practice became more commonplace with improved versions of the computer and the phone, language became the only real barrier preventing any two human beings on the planet from talking to each other. Even then, there are literally thousands of prototypes in the world for portable translators that can let two people who speak different languages casually communicate with each other. This ability to exchange notes between cultures has steadily been bringing more and more lies to light in the face of the public, the Egyptian revolution being only one example of the more extreme results. However, this ability doesn't simply endanger government secrets, but _all_ secrets there are to hide. Many of those secrets were intended to be kept away from humanity in general.

All lies inevitably come to light, one way or the other.

xxXxx

* * *

The Magical world was in great chaos and confusion.

The Magus Association and the Holy Church had all scheduled a meeting as a result.

This was a monumental moment in magical history, as those associations virtually hated each other with a passion for a wide variety of reasons. The only reason they didn't outright declare war on each other at some point was because they cared more about keeping the existence of magic a secret, and any sort of armed conflict would make that goal nearly impossible. What was happening now however, threatened to endanger everything they worked for.

Humanity was becoming aware of its surroundings.

One month ago, a war occurred that had shaken the foundations of everything they had built. The magical world faced the very real threat of exposure. Even worse, humanity was in a state that they may very well turn their weapons upon them if they learned of what had been going on below their very noses for untold centuries.

The Youkai species was pitiful to the Magus Association. Back in the Babylonian age and onward until the Middle Ages, the monstrous species had attempted a war upon humanity in general. The human species responded with military force that battled against the likes of the Youkai species into a standstill. Ogres, Lizard-men, and dozens of other monster species found themselves locked into mortal combat with Romans, and after them the Greeks, Persians, and Feudal Chinese dynasties, and after them the Feudal kingdoms of Europe of the middle ages. The humans could afford to lose thousands of their own on a daily basis and think nothing of it. The Youkai would've been irreversibly devastated if they lost a fraction of that many of their number at a similar rate. The Youkai were unable to maintain a battle of attrition with humans, yet they did so anyway, believing that species superiority would be more than enough to secure victory. The humans responded to this belief by grinding the population of the Youkai species to a fraction of what it originally was.

The only interesting points of that conflict were the presence of 'S-class' monsters. They were the more powerful of the monster species, who took hundreds of armed human soldiers to bring down by themselves. They were often the leaders of any organized monster force, and seen as nigh undefeatable. When the monster species found themselves being pushed backward, they were the ace in the hole that saved the Youkai species from extinction.

It was here that humanity revealed its own aces.

The Magi of the past had been unrivaled in power. Their spells weren't as watered down as their present incarnations were, and were several times more powerful. They were feared by their fellow humans, but ultimately respected for the simple fact they were truly human, and not some form of monster out to kill them. When the vampires and werewolves of the monster species rose to destroy the villages and settlements of humans, it was the Magi who rose to stand against them. S-class monsters found themselves fighting against humans who could wield impossible powers and abilities. These super powered humans appeared where the traditional human armies failed. They succeeded where armies had failed. Numerous S-class monsters fell to the incantations and powers of the Magi, who insured that humanity would never be outmatched by their enemies.

That had been long ago, a time of legends.

After the war lost traction and the Youkai species was in danger of extinction after continued conflict, many of them had migrated away from Europe. The majority of them slinked away into Japan, who was isolated from the rest of the world at the time, and completely unaware of the Youkai species. There, the Youkai settled in and resolved to try and find an alternate way of existence that didn't bring them into conflict with the dominant human species. The Magi of the past formed the Magus Association, who hid themselves from the rest of humanity to further the knowledge and practice of Thaumaturgy while subtly slinking away from the human population. Youkai and Magi alike fell into folktales and legends. After decades and decades passed with no recorded sittings of the Youkai or Magi, they were eventually written off as folktales and children's stories. Humanity continued to advance, seeing as there was nothing in the world to inhibit their actions and advancement as a species.

This wasn't to say that Humanity forgot about the Magi in general, but those who did know were involved in secretive organizations themselves, very good at keeping secrets, or silenced.

Sadly, this was one of the reasons that all of the influential powers in the magical world were assembling together. Their fellow humans weren't in danger of exposing them, but the very monsters they had helped to defeat all those years ago could. Humanity had been effectively hushed about the existence of the Magi. The Youkai however, were an entirely different issue. They had been isolated for the past several thousand years, and were nowhere near as dangerous as they once were. Their numbers were still devastated from their first war with humanity, they and never truly recovered. Humanity owned the entire planet and had unrestricted access to its resources, using those resources to improve their weapons and technology to astounding levels. The Youkai species was limited to integrating itself into human society, and living off of whatever scraps of earth the general human population overlooked. Such conditions limited just how freely they could reproduce. On top of that, they had lost thousands of monsters to the human military forces with the latest war. Their species was in danger of extinction, with their only hope of survival being that they could talk the general human population into staying their hand. If the Youkai brought up the subject magic in any way to the UN, then thousands of years of effort would be wasted.

The Magi weren't in any way involved with the war, yet there was an easy case of confused identity that could occur. The majority of the people killed in Japan were killed by the magical plants that had been summoned by Fairy Tale associated witches. Witches were humans that had somehow gotten the ability to produce youki energy, which all Youkai had. They were easily comparable to Magi in that they were very studious in learning about the extent of their abilities. They have their own established orders and collaborations, just like the Magi did. To someone who was incapable of sensing magic, the two were almost perfectly identical. The only apparent difference between a Magi and a witch was that witches favored the stereotypical cartoonish appearance of magic users, while Magi were seemingly average people, if a bit suspiciously out of touch with modern day technology.

The Magus Association wasn't sure if the Youkai knew the difference between witches and Magi, or if they even knew that there was a difference at all. Regardless, the fact that the Youkai _might_ know about them, was enough for drastic measures to be taken. If that weren't bad enough, things only got more complicated from there. There were numerous Magi who had been in Japan at the time of the attack, who were either killed in the crossfire or forced to leave before they could destroy their workshops. Due to the current situation, no one could be sent to destroy any evidence of Magi in Japan without the risk of being shot or attacked by either the Youkai extremists or the human military. However, if they let things play out, someone could discover those workshops, along with whatever information happened to be within them, and reveal the existence of the magical world.

There were so many complications in place that it would be a miracle if the magical world wasn't exposed for the entire planet to see very soon.

Then there were even further complications coming in. A new type of energy, neither youki or magic, had been discovered. It wasn't completely new either. It seemed to be some sort of mutated version of od mixed in with ectoplasm, which was what spirits were made out of. Magi had plenty of experience with them, having used spirits as slaves, familiars, and attack dogs frequently. The issue came in when they found a scarily large amount of it in Karakura city, mixed in with large amounts of radiation and explosive residue. That alone, implied they weren't the only ones who knew about this energy, and the ones that did know must've been a military force, or at least associated with a nation's military.

When they deployed familiars to observe what was happening, they found a battlefield filled with the corpses of strange spirits, armored humans, and even a few Youkai. In addition to corpses, they saw more armored humans, these ones very much alive along with normal humans in hazard suits. Those humans were gathering the bodies of their comrades, and burning all of the spirit corpses. The Magus Association knew a cover up attempt when they saw it, and had no doubts that something even larger was going on in the background of the war.

It was apparent that something had occurred in addition to the war against the Youkai, but no one was quite sure what. The spirits they saw were nothing like the phantoms that could be summoned by advanced Magi, or the heroic spirits summoned during the Holy Grail wars. They were entirely different, and somehow they had gotten into conflict with a human military branch that they were completely unfamiliar with, one that equipped all of their soldiers with several types of heavy armor.

The only information that could be brought up in relation was that the images of those armored humans matched the reports of 'Super Soldiers' on the news.

The situation of the Second Human Youkai War demanded the attention of the magical world. The issue wasn't that the situation needed attention, but exactly what kind of attention they needed to give it. They couldn't afford to come in and destroy all relevant information, as well as anyone who may know that information. There were too many possibilities of that course of action backfiring. If they simply sat back and let everything play out, they would inevitably have someone trace the information from the abandoned Magi workshops back to the Magus Association. They would have to destroy those workshops and not arouse any suspicion while doing it, and then hope that the Youkai had forgotten about the Magi over the years.

The meeting between the Church and Magus Association would ultimately determine how they would respond to all of these events.

xxXxx

* * *

Akasha Bloodriver was almost never intimidated.

She was thousands of years old. She had been alive when the 1st war with the humans and Youkai had first kicked off, though she herself wasn't a combatant during the conflict. She had been there when it ended and the Youkai species was in full retreat. She had personally directed monster kind in a gentler direction, with the assistance of Tenmei Mikogami, and Touhou Fuhei. She had been forced to defend her title numerous times from arrogant upstarts such as 9 tailed Youko, Ork clan leaders, and Werewolf pack alphas. She had faced and defeated them all with ease.

So she couldn't for the life of her figure out why she was so scared to go on stage in front of a few hundred humans.

To her knowledge, only a few of them were even armed, and those that were currently in possession of a weapon hardly posed a threat in the face of some of the strongest Youkai of the monster world. She knew that she was above every single one of these 'world leaders' in importance, stature, physical ability, and even mental capability, yet that knowledge did her little good considering that the vast majority of the people in that room could order a nuclear strike on her home at a whim.

The queen of vampires took a calming breath. She wasn't here to figure out the advantages and disadvantages that monsters and humans had on each other, she was here to try and inspire friendship between the two and evade continued warfare. She couldn't even begin to conceive how important this meeting was. Monster kind was coming out into the lime light and into the eyes of every major human leader on the planet. They were forsaking well over a millennium of tradition by doing this act, even if it wasn't necessarily voluntary. If a single thing went wrong, thousands would die at best and Youkai genocide would be carried out at absolute worst. She paused as she heard a round of clapping coming from the human leaders.

It seemed the Exorcist was making a good impression at least.

Tenmei Mikogami, the Exorcist and principal of Youkai academy, had volunteered to go up first. He was currently explaining to the world leaders of what Youkai Academy was, and what it was doing. He spoke pridefully of how his students entered the school thinking in the mindset of monsters, but came out of the school being just as capable as any human citizen. He was listing off the accomplishments of students after they graduated, and what they had done to contribute to human society. After he explained that he had collaborated with the PWCD for this idea, he noticed that many of the leaders in the audience looked a lot more receptive. Undoubtedly, they were worried about what would be the result if monsters taught other monsters how to act in human society without any humans to aid them in teaching.

Obviously however, listing what monsters had accomplished by simply mimicking humans wasn't enough to get many human world leaders on their side. A lot of people were still casting dirty looks toward the non-human who had the nerve to appear in a place like this. They were likely still plenty angry at the war that had occurred in Japan. The Exorcist noticed how hostile those humans in particular were being, so he went about gaining their trust through a different method.

He then brought up the fact that a few monsters had successfully joined the PWCD organization and were aiding the Black Ops organization in their efforts against the Youkai terrorists and extremists.

Akasha had to admire how easily the man could catch the humans' attention by bringing up common knowledge in skillfully eloquent ways. He had been speaking for 30 minutes, and in that time had made the human world leaders several times more receptive to her cause than they had been initially. Now all she had to do was go up after him, and not do anything to offend humankind and peace could yet be achieved.

Now if only she could remember all the things that she definitely shouldn't say, then she would be confident.

Akasha wasn't verbally challenged in conversation or anything like that. She was simply used to dealing with other monsters. When it came to speaking with beings who thought themselves equal to you, they always acted with confidence and even slight superiority if they thought they could beat you. It was always a game of flexing your muscles without revealing the height of your abilities. With beings who were weaker, they were often difficult but ultimately submissive in their actions and negotiations. They simply tested how much they could get from you before you put your foot down.

Humans were entirely different. They treated the people they were dealing with as equals, no matter the power difference between the countries that were negotiating. They even went out of their way to be friends with who they were negotiating with, even if it was usually just to appease the media most of the time. If you offended them, they simply threatened to 'break off diplomatic relations', which wasn't a direct threat at all. If you wanted something, you had to give something in exchange; otherwise they would look at you as if you were crazy, regardless of your ability to simply take it from them. Apparently in human politics, your worth came from what resources you had to offer, not how much more powerful you were than the person you're negotiating with.

Human politics were deeply confusing, but she got the gist of it. Simply pour on fake smiles and false friendliness in public, and pour on fake civility in face to face negotiations. If you could do that without incident, then you were perfectly capable of being a human politician. Both you and the person you were negotiating with were fully aware of the lies you were spouting to each other's faces. Both of you knew that you were plotting and playing at a secret agenda with every action, yet you both intentionally act as if you didn't have the slightest clue. Akasha understood how human politics worked, but she couldn't understand the logic behind why they did it the way they did.

The vampiress' ears were assaulted by a seated ovation from the human world leaders. The exorcist walked off stage, his usual smirk seemingly three times as prevalent on his face. The Youkai academy principal walked up to Akasha, his robes somehow still fluttering even indoors where there was no breeze.

"Well that went better than I could've hoped. To appeal to human politicians, act humble and frequently remind them of what it is you're doing to help them." Mikogami advised.

"I know how to talk to humans, but thank you anyway. It seems you've made quite a good impression for us so far." Akasha stated, impressed with her old friend's diplomatic abilities.

"Not as much as you think." Akasha looked at him with a curious expression, beckoning him to go on. "I've assured most them that the Youkai species as a whole doesn't have any ill intent towards humanity. However, they're still suspicious of our connection to the conflict." He replied. The vampiress frowned.

"What can we do to convince them otherwise?" She asked. Humans were tricky to deal with, especially when they knew what you truly were. They weren't completely hateful, however. It was simply their nature as a species to be hesitant toward things they saw as unnatural. They were infinitely easier to deal with when they felt they could partially trust you. She just needed to say the right thing to gain that trust.

"I doubt anything we say will fully rid of them of their suspicions." Mikogami's smile didn't falter as he said this. "They were attacked and lost nearly 100 million people in only a few days. The closest human experiences that can compare to such a catastrophe are World War 1 and 2, and the total losses of both wars were barely a fraction of this."

Akasha paused as she thought over this hitch.

"I actually think this may be somewhat good for them." The vampire blinked and looked at him in surprise. "What? Look at human history. The human species may get healthier and live longer as the years go by, but their mentality as a species is weakening further and further. In the Middle Ages, humanity was about as thick skinned as they'd ever be. They were familiar with conflict and didn't hesitate at the idea of battle. Now, they've gotten softer. Even the soldiers of the PWCD aren't as mentally sturdy as the medieval knightly orders. They feel disadvantaged at the idea of fighting with anything less than the best equipment they can get, while a knight would fight in those same odds with nothing but a sturdy claymore in his hand." Mikogami began rambling.

Akasha only continued to listen out of the curiosity of where he was going with this.

"After World War 1 and 2, humanity abruptly became less complacent and prepared themselves for future conflict. Tragedies that claim human lives en-mass only make the human species stronger overall, but if the threat isn't constant then they grow complacent. Fairy Tale may have caused a lot of issues, but the humans did badly need a reality check that they weren't as untouchable as they thought they were. Now they'll adapt to the world in preparation for what new threats may arise."

"And that's a good thing? We don't need humans to be any stronger, we need them to be more peaceful and accepting." The vampiress responded.

"Who said I was only referring to the situation between humans and Youkai?" Mikogami stated, his smirk larger than ever. Akasha's eyes narrowed.

"What are you talking about Mikogami?"

"We thought that humans were ignorant for thinking they were the sole sentient residents of earth. Are we that much more enlightened? The humans didn't know that we existed because we hid from them, and even then a small minority of them was completely aware of us. Who's to say that we aren't in a similar situation?"

"The hollows are an admittedly new addition, but they aren't that much of an issue. The humans dealt with them, and they dealt with the Shinigami as a threat during the war." The vampiress stated dismissively, already guessing what Mikogami was implying.

"I wasn't talking about the spirit world."

The Exorcist was beginning to walk away. Akasha Bloodriver was stumped by what she had heard. What could he possibly mean by that? The vampiress was tempted to pursue the man for further answers, but she felt his youki power levels spike up and then abruptly disappear. The man had apparently teleported into the room that the other Youkai representatives were waiting in, both to inform them of his performance and evade any further conversation about his parting statement.

A man on stage announced her name, species, and title to the crowd of humans. They responded to the phrase 'Queen of Vampires' with either stifled laughter or questioning glances to their peers. Regardless they politely clapped, which in human politics was how they welcomed a speaker to the stage. She looked over herself one time, insuring that she was decent for the occasion. Well she had to thank Mikogami for one thing. She was no longer nervous about her portion of the speech. She was too deep in thought about what the Exorcist had saidto be concerned about her initial reception.

Throwing her thoughts to the wind for the time being, she walked onto the stage welcoming the odd stares she received because of her pink Victorian-style dress.

xxXxx

* * *

Deep in Hueco Mundo there dwelled a creature that inspired fear in all hollows.

The bodies of dozens of murdered adjuchas-level hollows lay scattered across the menos forest. Their wounds didn't speak of being brutally overpowered, but surgically cut and stabbed. Some had their throats slit. Some had a few of their major arteries cut and they had bled to death. One had a hole going through their eye socket and out the back of its head. Since the edges of the hole were singed, it meant that the hole wasn't a natural hollow hole but the result of a condensed and well-aimed cero.

These Adjuchas had all been a 'clan' so to speak. For one reason or another, they had forgone attempting to devour each other and instead worked together for a mutual purpose. Such groups were rare, as hollows rarely ever found it in themselves to trust each other enough not to try and kill the others in their sleep or something similar. When they were formed, they were nearly unstoppable, as nothing weaker than a vasto lorde had the ability to uproot and defeat them. Such battles were threatening in and of themselves as the massive flares of reiatsu attracted countless hollows; who would either wait for a victor to be chosen before attacking, or simply opt to go for the kill mid-combat, and start massive aimless brawls.

That wasn't an issue here as these Adjuchas hollows had all been cut down before they could truly get off an attack.

Standing in the center of the dead creatures was a warped parody of a PWCD commando. Its armor was white, rather than the usual black. The creature's helmet was busted open to reveal a hollowed out skull with empty eye sockets. Its armor was in ruins, sporting numerous hole punctures, scratches, and exposed wiring. In its right hand was a weapon that was a curious mixture of a pizza cutter-like blade and a rifle. The blade was arranged so that the handle of the blade was attached to the barrel, and the blade itself was beneath the rifle-butt. In its left hand was a ruined hollow mask with a puncture and a bit of blood on the forehead area.

This creature had marauded across Hueco Mundo for a month, pondering what to do with its existence.

It was a hybrid of a human super soldier and a hollow, an abomination that would be killed on sight by everything that saw it. The creature was lost in what it should do with itself. The creature had been satisfied in its human life as a soldier for the PWCD and in its hollow life as an auxiliary to Aizen's army. When the human half of itself had been captured, they used some form of kido to fuse the two beings together. Two spirits had been bound together, both of which would've readily killed the other if they had the chance. Now they were both forced to endure a tortured existence in a body neither of them wished to inhabit.

They had been named the Meta by their creator.

Aizen had used the hybrid as both a rabid attack dog and personal guard; using them to destroy the remaining members of his army when he realized that they were virtually useless now as anything more than cannon fodder. The madman had always thought that power was everything. He believed that once the hogyoku had granted him ultimate power, nothing would be able to defeat him. With that belief, he polished off the 'useless' arrancar and sent the rest to die fighting both the PWCD and Shinigami in the city of Karakura. After their defeat became inevitable, the madman joined the fight and unleashed his full potential. Aizen devastated the remaining members of the 13 protection squads, and forced the PWCD army to flee. The madman felt assured that he would rule the world with this power.

The PWCD responded by firing a nuclear warhead at him.

He wasn't killed immediately, as his power was enough to shield him from the brunt of the explosion, and then the hogyoku energized him as well as it could to keep his wounds from killing him. The hogyoku would've eventually burnt out, which would've assured Aizen's death. Just leaving him be may have allowed him to somehow heal however. So in the interest of not allowing some unforeseen event to save the madman from certain death, the Meta shot him a few times just to be sure. The human half had decades of experience, which was more than enough to know better than to just leave a dying enemy be.

With all that done, the Meta was now unknown in their purpose. They didn't have to ingest other souls to survive, which made the hollow side rather confused about what its existence should be focused on. It was no longer human thanks to the fusing of two completely different bodies together, which killed any hope of returning to its human life as a soldier. They would certainly be killed if it went anywhere near Soul Society. The 13 protection squads already had a rocky relationship with the PWCD and their augmented soldiers to begin with, and they actively hunted hollows. A fusion of both may as well have painted a giant target on its chest.

Now that they were truly free of any immediate enemies, they acknowledged that they were very good at killing. Creatures of their power level were too slow to keep pace with them. Most augments could keep pace with them but weren't strong enough to endure a single blow it sent. Even PWCD commandos, augments equipped with reiatsu powered armor, were pathetically weak in comparison. They were more of a threat for the guns they wielded that could punch through the Meta's armor, rather than their close combat ability. Only an augment wielding a reiatsu powered hammer and a jet-pack had been able to give them a real challenge, and he had been left broken and bleeding on the ground last they saw him, which was milliseconds before several squads of commandos ambushed them.

They knew that killing was the only thing they would and could do, but they felt conflicted about killing whatever they happened to come across.

To simply spend time, the Meta had taken to killing off a few of the more powerful hollows every now and then. The fact that the Meta had an Adjuchas power level warded off most threats, and Adjuchas with a slightly higher power level were easily sorted out as the bodies at their feet could attest to. Strength was nothing if you couldn't bring it to bear against your enemy in time.

The Meta sonido'd away, wandering around the desert for something else worthy of their time.

The hybrid wasn't going to simply be idle during this time; they just needed to discover a reason to do anything other than what they were already doing. This desert was nothing but sand and hollows. There was the odd soul here and there that somehow got teleported into Hueco Mundo as well. The Meta opted to save them from being eaten, more out of boredom and some dormant sense of humanity rather than any legitimate reason. They always opened Gargantas to Seireitei and threw the scared souls out as lightly as they could, and then pressed on with its odd life.

The Meta had one day killed an Adjuchas, and had a pack of rabid hollows ready to devour the body. Since the hybrid felt even more bored than normal, it opened a Garganta to Seireitei and dumped the dead body of the Adujchas through the portal. The rabid hollows swarmed in after the body, just before the Meta closed it. To this day they were curious how that had played out, but weren't nearly brave enough to attempt to investigate. They weren't invincible after all.

The Meta paused as they felt many different signatures entering Hueco Mundo, not hollows or shinigami. They felt somewhat human, but held large amounts of reiatsu. They couldn't be PWCD, as the organization always tried to conceal the amount of reiatsu they leaked to avoid detection. Satisfied at this new development, the Meta repressed it's reiatsu to nearly undetectable levels and began angling toward the direction of those energy signatures.

They noted with interest that they had appeared inside Las Noches.

xxXxx


	2. A day in the life

**A day in the life**

Inside the lower levels of one of the PWCD Japan bases, another day for the personnel went on.

The augmented men and women in the organization may have been super soldiers, but they were still people. Like normal people, they needed some sort of activity to entertain them. The PWCD higher ups realized this, and went out of their way to supply the augments with access to media entertainment, non-human databases, workout centers, sparring and training equipment, and the best shooting ranges that could be acquired. In addition to training devices, they had _rationed_ access to alcoholic beverages. Televisions, well stocked mess halls, and even things such as video games were offered.

Many were conflicted on how to treat the augments when they were first created. They couldn't be treated as they were when they were special operators, spies, and such. When they were under the eye of their superiors at that point in their lives, they endured the most brutal and thankless jobs imaginable. Many people dropped out of that lifestyle before they could even complete the necessary training. The ones that remained only did so out of a stubborn will, though it varied from person to person as to where that will came from. However, the oppressiveness of the job was countered by the fact that those people could get breaks from service and a decent amount of downtime after their training was done. For the time they had, they were able to live life as they wanted. Once you were augmented, you lost that benefit. You were no longer allowed to simply 'give up' once you became an augment, regardless of any trauma you suffered as a result. That was your permanently walk of life, whether you liked it or not.

The president of the PWCD wanted the augments to maintain their edge in combat seeing as they were simple humans with no magic, monster blood, or some such other ability to aid them, called to fight inhuman and supernatural entities. Even with the best technological armor in the world and augmentative surgeries, they still couldn't compare to some of the creatures that ran rampant across across the earth. The war with the arrancar had proven that much. They needed their soldiers to be absolutely flawless, or they would certainly die. Every augment was indeed a threat to be feared, but they were frustratingly difficult to replace. The aftermath of the arrancar war left them with hundreds of augments dead, and in dire need to replace and recover their equipment.

The transition from a normal human to an augment super soldier was long and tedious. They required that all eligible candidates be combat veterans with a near perfect record. That alone cut down the eligible members of the PWCD Corps to only a few dozen thousand people out of the entire human population. Of those eligible, they had to consent to being pulled from their original country or place of loyalty and officially listed as KIA to the rest of the world, while simultaneously only being told that they will fight a threat more dangerous than terrorists, traitors, and pirates could ever hope to be. Due to the vague description given, without a clear idea of what they were getting themselves into, the ratio was that 4 out of 5 eligible candidates turned the offer down on the spot and most tended to decline after they were given time to think on their decision. From there, those that were both eligible and willing had undergone the process of being gradually introduced to the knowledge that various inhuman creatures lived beneath their noses. This was tricky, as many people would blow up and feel they were being tricked or taken for fools. Often times, they had to actually introduce the candidates to the more friendly of monsters before they began to accept their situation. After that, they went through the three month period of receiving the surgery and having biological specialists, as well as veteran augments walk them through their newly enhanced bodies and how to use them without hurting themselves or others. From there, they underwent a brief course in weapons fire, close quarters, and survival training. It may have seemed redundant, as anyone eligible to be an augment was already well-versed in all these things. However, being a super human made you have to handle weapons differently, fight in a slightly different manor, and made the requirements of surviving in the wilderness slightly more forgiving. As an augment, your gun could easily collapse in your hands if you squeezed it too hard, or you may get your arm caught in a wall or something similar if you threw a punch a little too hard and missed your opponent.

Compared to how long it took to develop an augment super soldier, all it took was a careless mistake to kill one off. That being said, any casualty that was suffered, especially one whose body and armor wasn't recovered, was a tragic waste of both resources and skill. They had to perform absolutely perfect on the field; no exceptions.

On the other hand, it's been proven time and time again in history that abusing humans for any reason at all never ended favorably for the abusers. Taking inhumane measures to ensure the augmented soldiers' compliance would've only made things worse in the long run. The augments realized the necessities of their harsh conditioning, some were even quite used to it due to the conditions of their old lives, but even they would rebel after they figured they were being unreasonably ill treated. The PWCD higher-ups acknowledged this as a fact, and refused to allow this possibility to develop. Since they couldn't counter this problem by simply giving the augments a 'leave of duty' every once in a while however, they did the next best thing. Every major PWCD base was installed with a small entertainment center, which augments were allowed access to whenever they had free time outside of training and deployments. It wasn't much, all things considered, but it did wonders in cooling the stress augments had to deal with as the result of their career choices.

Funnily enough though, the one area augments generally tended to frequent more than they did entertainment centers, were the sparring mats. Major PWCD bases housed anywhere from a few dozen, to a few hundred augments at any point in time. Each of those augments had backgrounds touching every specialized force, spy agency, and mercenary group around the world. It wasn't a wonder that such soldiers would be interested in testing their effectiveness against their foreign counterparts from other countries every so often in a light sparring match. In more extreme cases, they engaged each other in pseudo-war games with rubber stun rounds and plastic armor. Unfortunately, those frequently ended in armed brawls, as they could easily dodge each other's shots and rush each other. The PWCD was planning to replace all their current war games equipment with laser tag equipment. It would be less intense for sure, but since augments couldn't dodge lasers, they would now have a reason to keep their distance from each other and fight how they were meant to. Some considered scraping the war games entirely, due to the high injury rate, but the augments were vocal in their insistence to keep it. They claimed it was as close to real combat as they would get without actually entering a war zone, and made good practice. If they enjoyed it, pains and all, far be it from the president to forbid them from getting in decent practice.

This was the life of an augment; training, fighting, and killing, with small intervals of free time in between.

In addition to this, a strange occurrence had happened to the majority of the PWCD combat personnel. It was well known that being spiritually aware meant that a human had somehow been exposed to enough reiatsu to be able to see spirits unaided. The fighting in Karakura had been heavily saturated in reiatsu, what with literally over a thousand powerful spiritual beings being present and using their powers to the greatest of their ability. With so much spirit energy being emitted at once, virtually every human within a 10 mile radius of Karakura had absorbed enough spirit energy to become spiritually aware. Nearly every augment, as well as a large portion of the pilots and staff of the PWCD had been present in Karakura during the fighting. By the end of the battle, the majority of the combat able augments found themselves able to see the shinigami, arrancar, and hollows without their helmets. It was a curious development, and one being handled with sensitivity as well. Hollows were three times as likely to gun for a spiritually aware human as a normal one, and that made most PWCD soldiers three times as likely to be attacked by rabid hollows. To some people it was a stroke of luck, but to most others it was irritating, as they were already capable of seeing the creatures when they actually needed to. The perk of being able to see spirits without aid was certainly not worth the extra target prioritization they had gained. This new development had only complicated matters, as not just hollows, but all spiritual beings had a slight means of picking out PWCD personnel from a crowd of normal people, uniformed or not. Needless to say, the higher ups weren't happy about it, but accepted that it couldn't be helped.

At least it made it convenient for issues involving the defectors of the hollow army.

One day, Grimmjow had caught sight of Eli and Jacob, respectively the CQC expert and Squad leader of Grave team, sparring. Eli was a black belt in the Brazilian capoeira fighting style, with a blue belt in Wing Chun. Jacob had the basics of Israeli Krav Maga, and implored his squad mate to teach him a few handy moves when unarmed and faced with a stronger enemy. After an hour of teaching him the basic movements and style that capoeira favored, Eli asked for a full contact spar so that he'd know where his squad leader was in terms of practical application.

The following exchange excited Grimmjow enough for him to spontaneously 'join in the fun'.

After the following incident was explained off by Cirucci as a serious misunderstanding, a few of the recently integrated arrancar had suddenly found themselves more intrigued watching the augments spar each other in the large, foam covered, room. Harribel, Ulquiorra, and Grimmjow often watched the augments fight, paying careful attention to their mechanics, but with the super humans moving so fast in their spars, it was often hard to correctly read the movements. They weren't so much impressed with the force of the blows, as they were pathetically weak in their eyes. What they _were_ impressed with, was how effectively the humans had learned to manipulate another's body. From Judo trips, to hip tosses, they were astounded at how creatively one could hurt another person, and make it look so easy by doing movements they never thought of before.

They were primarily intrigued in the idea of how this could've helped them in Las Noches, fighting other arrancar. Just imagining the number of victories they could've had, had they applied any of these fighting styles against their fellow evolved hollows, was a dish on a silver platter to them.

So now Harribel, the late tercera espada, found herself learning the basics of Wing Chun with Eli.

She had forsaken her usual dress in favor of sweat pants and a sleeveless turtleneck, with the actual 'neck' part covering everything below her eyes. Eli gave her a cocked eyebrow at the turtleneck, but she simply explained that she was uncomfortable showing her mask fragment. Eli didn't know what that was, but decided to not pry anyway. He assumed that it had something to do with her questionable attire when he first saw her.

Her 'official' reason for wanting to be taught was that she had wanted to be more versatile in her means of fighting than simply relying on her sword, even though it had worked perfectly fine for her in the past. The 'unofficial' reason was that she had felt weak when she was without Tiburon for those first days of confinement. She had hated the feeling of being weak and at the mercy of her captors, and wanted to be assured that no matter what anyone took from her, she would still be perfectly capable of fighting. Eli saw no reason to say no to her, and agreed to train her under the stipulation that she not put any reiatsu behind her attacks.

He didn't have any interests in being launched through a wall, after all.

As he went through the basic combination of defenses and attacks, their 'lesson' slowly migrated from teaching into sparing as she became more comfortable in the steps. Wing Chun wasn't a particularly tricky combat style to learn, as it revolved around the concept of attacking and defending at the same time, nothing more and nothing less. Other styles often had you bouncing around like a harlequin. Eli's second style, capoeira, was a testament to that, as it literally was taught in the form of a tribal dance for historic reasons. Wing Chun users were content to stand perfectly still and let their enemies waste energy hammering away at them, then punish them for any overly brash attacks they made. It was even more convenient for Harribel, as it was a style that a woman had invented to counter brute strength and overpowering attacks. Eli showed her the basic blocks, and taught her to correctly throw a punch while she blocked with the other arm. This was to halt the momentum an attacker may have when rushing, since when you attacked you often invested into the action. If you rushed in for a punch or a combo attack and suddenly found a fist coming at you, you were forced to stop and block, throw yourself to the side, or accept the blow and try to power through it. It was also fairly integrateable with sword play, once you had learned it well enough.

Harribel found herself steadily getting more efficient in her skills, as Eli threw quick feather punches to test her defense. She couldn't counter punch for every single one he threw, in fact he discouraged her from trying as it was a waste of energy, however she made sure to jab at his ribs or even go for a straight kick to the shin when she got the chance. He was accepting of every blow that landed on his frame, despite the fact that the woman was striking him a little harder than he liked. Eli then taught her the chain punch, which was one of the more famous moves of Wing Chun. The way it was set up, you could easily catch your opponent off balance and under a hail of punches. If you were correctly maintaining your form, and your opponent was pressing hard on the attack, the move (if done right) would assure that the attacker would either go down on the ground, or be forced back. In essence, you moved your arms in a weak, train piston-like, motion at your opponent. The punches were generally weak as you never moved them back far enough to get power behind them, but they were enough that anyone under the flurry of blows would cover up in a heartbeat.

After an hour or so of practice, the two settled down for a quick break. Harribel being a powerful spirit and Eli being an augmented human, neither of them were tired, nor would they easily be, but Eli had told her that it was better she not try and learn too much at once. Harribel simply figured that he was beginning to feel the toll of her hits, and wanted a break. Regardless, she accepted it and allowed him the time to lick his wounds. It simply wouldn't do, if she hurt her own instructor after making such significant progress in so little time.

"It's good that you're already skilled in combat. The main issue with learning a new style of fighting is getting coordinated in the movements and establishing muscle memory. Since you've already gotten past both those problems with your years of sword fighting, you only need to worry about memorizing the forms." Eli informed, taking a swig of water. "Of course, that's an issue I need to learn as well." Harribel cocked an eyebrow at the statement.

"Are you not a master at this fighting style?" The ex-Espada curiously asked. Eli laughed and shook his head.

"I'm nothing but a simple blue belt, which is essentially the halfway point between mastery and beginner. Unfortunately I'm stuck at this level until I can find someone who is at least a belt above me, and I doubt that will happen."

"Why is that? Don't all augments know some form of fighting as a requirement?" She asked.

"Yes, but almost all of them learned their combat techniques from military instructors or something similar. Martial arts is just that, an art form. Soldiers generally don't use it, as they feel it's too impractical to use in real combat. Only a small amount of martial arts is actually applicable in life or death combat, which is why most militaries don't use them. The augments here are no different."

"If that's true, then how did you come to use your two martial arts styles?" Harribel asked, intrigued.

"I had gotten a black belt in capoeira before I joined the military. I had gone through the mandatory close quarters course, and then took up Wing Chun during my leave time." Eli stated, some pride seeping into his voice.

"Obviously learning all these techniques improved your skill above most other augments, so why didn't they learn any other forms of fighting as well?" Harribel prodded further.

She had been excited at the idea of learning even more expertise in combat. For arrancar, the only way to get stronger was to increase your level of spirit energy or hone your natural abilities to a fine edge. Harribel had gotten both her spirit energy and ability with Tiburon to their peek. She had felt that she was as strong as she'd ever get at that point. Then she had learned of this style of fighting that could potentially defeat an even stronger opponent, and actually saw its ability at work on her fellow arrancar first hand both during the incident with the human infiltrators and the battle in Karakura city.

"It isn't that they don't wish to learn, but that it takes potentially years of training in any martial arts form to be able to get the desired results. Many soldiers find that the brief several month long courses most special forces take for close quarters is more than enough to get them to the point they want, and they simply go from there." Eli explained, getting up to roll his shoulder. He was preparing to leave and get cleaned up but turned to look at his newly adopted student.

Harribel's gaze was enough of an incentive for him to explain further. He supposed that since he had piqued her curiosity, he may as well indulge it.

"Well as special forces, we don't need to be close quarters experts. We only need to be skilled enough that should we get into a one on one fight with an enemy soldier, armed or not, we'll be able to take them down quickly. That's why we carry primary weapons, then side arms, and then knives. Fighting with our bare hands is only a last resort, but one that we extensively train for regardless."

"What about you're shock troopers? They seem to specialize in close ranged fighting, despite having layers of weapons to fall back on." Harribel asked. She blinked at the reaction she got.

Eli was now scowling in distaste at the mention of that particular augment variant.

"Did I say something to offend you?" Harribel asked her voice slightly more curious than apologetic.

Eli shook his head and looked at her. His strange colored eyes almost made her think he was blind when they first met, until she saw that they were indeed tracking her movements like any functional eyes would. "No. you haven't said or done anything to bother me. I just don't feel comfortable talking about those men." Harribel realized that he likely had some sort of history with the jet packing augments.

"I didn't see you as the type to hold a grudge or hate your own allies." Eli glanced at her with a smile, and calmly dispersed the notion.

"I don't hate them. They simply bother me with their tendencies. They wear war paint, both as a means of intimidation and to keep tally of how many powerful beings they've successfully hunted. They frequently carry butcher blades so that they can hack apart those they fight in close combat. At standard, we generally shy away from close quarters unless it's the best way for us to fight at the moment, while Shock troopers seemingly enjoy close combat. They even take some sort of glory in it. Most of all, they've been known to bring back trophies from their 'hunts'. They also tend to be difficult to work with, due to them being so obsessed with combat. I don't have any personal issues with them, but their actions remind me more of psychotic brawlers than trained soldiers." The Jamaican augment shook his head in self-condescending. "But who am I to judge? I've never met one of them personally, and I could be completely unfounded in my description."

Harribel was silent as she processed this information. She would have never guessed that humans, augmented or not, didn't fully approve of one another's methods. After all, she had seen the full effect of what happened when you gathered every augment in the world into a single place before. That was the predominant reason the arrancar population had gone from the triple digits to single digits in only two days of fighting. She had at first assumed that whatever differences in armor they had was simply projecting what their combat preference was, not their actual mental tendencies. Maybe she could figure out what tendencies other augments tended to gravitate toward. Aside from the 'normal' augments, she had seen 3 other variants of augments present in Karakura city. There were the 12 foot tall suits with 6 eyes looking in all directions, the smaller and more maneuverable suits that either carried large rapid fire guns or those electric hammers, and then there were the shock troopers.

Then she remembered those augments that had taken her and her fellow surviving arrancar hostage, who didn't seem to match the appearance or abilities of any of the augments she had seen so far.

Coincidentally, they were the ones that had worried her the most out of all of them. They were apparently strong enough to somewhat contend with the arrancar in strength, while still holding their speed advantage over their heads. They had guns that could actually pierce arrancar hierros, as well as even more advanced combat training then the average augment, seeing as four of them had demolished Barragan's fraccion in seconds. She didn't have any illusions that they existed to fight monsters, seeing as the normal augments were capable of that much on their own. They weren't meant for normal hollows, as the two larger and more unruly augment classes had been more purposed to that cause than the others. She wasn't fooled for a second.

Those augments were created specifically to hunt arrancar.

That was likely the reason they had taken all of these liberties in her kind's treatment. She and her fellow arrancar were aligned with hollows, beings that the PWCD hunted viciously when they appeared. At any moment, she and her allies could decide to decimate this place at its most vulnerable, simply open a Gargantia into Huecco Mundo and escape, or do both. The PWCD knew this better than anyone since they were the ones to defeat them all in the first place, yet they had taken the risk regardless, without any apparent payoff for this unreasonably hospitable treatment of their enemies.

They likely had a few of those arrancar hunters cloaked and ready to kill at a split second's notice. Those arrancar hunting augments were unable to be tracked due to the reiatsu of their armor somehow being cloaked. They couldn't be seen due to the active camouflage they had. For all she knew there was one right in front of her-

_Snap! Snap! Snap!_

The blond flinched backward in surprise, her hand flashing to grip her sword, while her other building power for a bala. She had to move fast or this augment would surely end her.

"Harribel?"

The woman blinked, and suddenly looked around. The entire room of augmented humans were preoccupied in their spars or conversations. There was no one who even appeared to have a passive aggressive aura toward her at the moment. It took her a moment to realize that she was standing with one arm cocked back and glowing, and her other hand gripping air, as she had placed Tiburon a few feet away from the sparring mat before she began.

She glanced to her left and found Eli still sitting down, staring back up her with a cocked eyebrow and a half-smirk smirk.

"I didn't scare you, did I?" The augment asked, his smirk slowly widening to a more apparent level. The ex-espada looked at him with narrowed eyes.

"Of course not. I was just loosening up for the second part of our lesson and test fight we'd have afterward." Eli frowned, catching the threat in between her words.

"Before we continue, I maintain that if I feel more roughed up than I should feel, than I may be too physically impaired to teach you anymore." Harribel frowned, catching his own counter threat.

"Very well. I'll be sure to restrain myself so that I don't accidentally break you." She cracked a hidden smirk when the large man slightly deflated at her jab at his masculinity.

She grabbed his outstretched hand and pulled him to his feet. The two went out on the mat to continue their exchange. It was mostly just them going back over forms and demonstrating how they are meant to be used. They went through the next hour doing this with repetition, as it was the best way to learn anything. It was all fun and games until Harribel accidentally let a small amount of her spirit energy to leak and winded Eli with a punch to the solar plexus.

Now Eli was on his knees and trying to slowly correct his breathing, Harribel kneeling on his left side with slight concern on her face, Jacob standing on his right and laughing at him like a good friend would.

It would have been very light hearted way to end the day, had they not been under observation all the while. Harribel had been somewhat correct in her assumption. The PWCD hadn't managed to put the fear of God into the monster and spirit worlds by being peaceful and accepting to every non-human with a slight chance at redeeming themselves. Neliel. Cirucci, Pesche, Dondochakka, and Bawabawa were an odd bunch, but they had expressed a large desire to aid the PWCD in their endeavors. Even at the point where they had been most expected to rebel, and the PWCD had been too out of position with their forces to reliably stop them, rather than betray the organization, they had offered to go to the battlefield and fight against their own kind alongside the augments.

It had confused the PWCD president to no end why they were so willing to help them while getting virtually nothing in return. So to get some insight, they had brought in an augment with experience in interrogation to speak to them individually, but in a non-threatening manor. He asked them simple, seemingly unrelated questions, all the while looking through varies databases, almost as if every question they asked aided him in researching something important. After taking a short 20 minutes to interrogate each arrancar under the PWCD's employ before the battle of Karakura, the augment forwarded his report to the president directly.

Hollows had a wolf pack-like mentality.

They were human souls that had been isolated from companionship for so long that they longed for a group that they could socialize with or really any form of interaction they could find, even subconsciously. Aizen's army had acted as that pack that every hollow wished to belong to, and with his death (or betrayal, in the case of Cirucci and Neliel), the remaining self-conscious hollows and arrancar found themselves lost. The previously listed creatures had began to see the PWCD as their new 'pack' so to speak, which was why they were so eager to help when they felt that they could. Had they had the thought process of normal humans, they would've been miserable to be in the position they were in and possibly try to escape or kill themselves. The arrancar's thought process on the other hand saw the human organization as a place of safety against any external threats, with a clear status-quo as to who answered to who, and more importantly gave them people who they could socialize and find equal ground with. The only way the PWCD were able to understand the odd logic these spirits used was because it was somewhat comparable to that of wolves, who would react the same way if they were captured by an enemy wolf pack. Already, the newly captured arrancar were beginning to view the PWCD less and less as 'captors', and more as 'masters'. It wouldn't be too far off to label the situation as an advanced case of Stockholm syndrome.

The PWCD wanted to encourage this behavior, but they also knew that regardless of what their psychiatric impulses were, they still had the ability to resist and ignore those impulses. After all, human nature dictates NOT to actively hunt creatures higher on the food chain than you, yet their entire organization revolved around doing just that. There was every chance that the arrancar would take up arms, maybe even unify and make an organized break out.

It was for this reason that commando teams Alpha and Zi had been transferred to this very base in secret.

Of course, the hyper lethal augments weren't walking around in full gear. They carried on with their usual routines in the same fatigues that augments typically wore, which made them blend in amongst their fellow augments perfectly. They weren't here to completely 'shadow' the arrancar, as such a thing would eventually be noticed, if not by the arrancar then the augments that were out of the loop. The commandos were technically no different than normal augments in physical ability. They carried themselves the same as any professional soldier did, and acted the same for the most part.

Their only real difference was that as commandos, they had taken customized training from James Wesker, one of the first augments created.

The black legend of a soldier had created his own style for fighting monsters, which favored forcing openings, picking apart openings, and outright punishing their enemy once they had their enemies completely reeling. Wesker had personally trained the augments in a manor that made them not only skilled at killing arrancar, armor or not, but made them excel at it. They learned of means to kill that were usually thought of as impractical, made practical by superior speed and knowledge of the humanoid body. They were by no means capable of being able to beat multiple enemy arrancar to death with their bare hands or something equally outrages, but they certainly knew enough that when they wanted to kill something, they knew exactly where and how hard to hit for the best results. This was provided that they didn't shoot their targets first or that they did and their M8 Kondras ,down-scaled anti-tank rifles, weren't killing their targets for one reason or another. So far, the commandos had yet to encounter that problem.

The arrancar of the base definitely qualified as a major threat, but they could also be used as a major boon. It was for this reason that they weren't shot by Wesker and his commandos when they had first been found at the sight of the first nuclear detonation site. If the arrancar continued like this, then the PWCD would remove their hidden executors and welcome the once hostile spirits into their so called 'pack' with open arms.

If not, then they would all be killed off immediately and their bodies disposed of. This included the arrancar who had been loyal both before and during the war with Aizen, as there was a very high possibility that they would rebel if they saw their fellow arrancar being killed off. The integration of arrancar into the PWCD was an all or nothing deal, and they didn't intend to take any needless risks. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that however, and everything would work out perfectly.

Unfortunately when it came to matters like this, anything that could possibly go wrong, _would_ go wrong.

xxXxx

* * *

Author's note: I've made a conscious effort to stop doing these, as I've been told that they tend to take away from the story, but I feel that this chapter needs to be explained.

Throughout the previous story, I never really got into the mechanics of how being an augment, or being a part of the PWCD in general worked outside of combat. I admit that was pretty hypocritical of me, as those types of things not being pointed out tend to irritate me the most in virtually ANY form of fiction. In addition, I generally hate stories that create super soldiers, and frequently make them 'humanity's last hope' (the Halo series excluded), as if any war in history was ever won by a small group of soldiers. The reason why, is that the purpose of super soldiers is NOT to be some sort of super heroes of war, that stand out in war zones with billowing capes and banners (I'm looking at you warhammer 40k). If a country did produce super soldiers, then they'd have a hell of a time figuring out what to do with them.

If you want armored behemoths that demolish everything in their path and laugh at small arms fire, we have battle tanks for that. They can be produced faster, are easy to make, and you don't have to put a poor sap through hell training just to be able to use it properly.

If you want something that'll kill hundreds of people in seconds, we have over a hundred different flavors of bombs that fill that role. I don't think I can properly list all the different types of high explosives that have been created for the purpose of blowing entire armies, or individual people, to hell and back.

If you want grunt troops that are tougher than normal, it'd be easier to simply invest in better armor and weapons. In a firefight, you can die in dozens of ways, and the majority of them would have you die under conditions that you can't possibly have avoided unless God himself stepped in. You wouldn't want your uber expensive soldiers dieing because a random explosive happened to land in their general direction.

That only leaves situations where we can't just blow the enemy sky high for complicated reasons, and when in those situations, we usually send some form of special operations unit depending on what exactly the problem is. If you _were_ to have super soldiers fill the position of special forces, they'd have to be pretty damn sneaky. If they're pretty damn sneaky, than they most likely aren't the truck throwing, man-giant, testosterone filled variety of super soldiers.

As such, the reason I created the PWCD wasn't just to have an excuse to make super soldiers troll monsters, but because with monsters and stuff running around, there's an actual legitimate reason to be investing in such a thing. Anything that can take a bullet and keep going, or outright dodge a bullet is a serious threat that nothing short of a small army of trained soldiers could deal with. In that situation, it's more efficient to have a guy or group of guys who could step up to such creatures and not get slaughtered. Even then, if those monsters or whatever get bold enough to step out into the open and declare war on the human species, about 50 different types of bombs would be locked onto them before they could blink.

Most animes I've seen tend make super soldiers out to be 'the one thing between the human species and extinction', as seen in 'Strike Witches', 'Freezing', 'Claymore', and a variety of other shows (funnily enough, they also tend to have the stereotypical 'genius scientist who everyone should worship for making those soldiers in the first place'). In reality, that's as far from the truth as it gets. Super soldiers are convenient for fighting aliens and demons and such, but certainly not a necessity. They simply replace the various spec ops units as the go to people for when they need something killed/stolen/sabotaged, and the guys they're fighting are tougher than your average human. If the PWCD as a whole were to just up and disappear, the only difference in the story would've been roughly three times as many nukes going off in the attempt to kill something.

This chapter was mostly to flush out the PWCD in a more in depth way, rather than just having a bunch of armored guys running around and killing stuff.


	3. The Hunt Begins

**The Hunt Begins**

'Peace through superior firepower.'

When this phrase was first uttered, it was meant as a joke. It was simply military jargon used by weapon addicts to justify whatever high explosives they made and used. As time went on however, this simple phrase slowly gained more and more meaning. The world is by nature, in constant conflict. From individual cells and atoms to entire species, conflict is a part of life.

This is where the phrase comes into meaning. When two opposing forces are equal in power, or at least close in terms of strength, they will inevitably fight for superiority at some point. When two opposing forces are uneven, and one is significantly more powerful than the other, the possibility of fighting is less likely. The survival instinct in any sentient being dictates not to attack something that threatens you more than you threaten it. This applies both to individual, nation, and species-wide conflicts.

Even the modern world is a perfect example of this. Today, the world is in a state that is more peaceful than it has ever been in known history. Very few places in the world even see conflict on a regular basis, and those places that do are constantly being implored and negotiated with to stop fighting by the rest of the world. Do not be confused. This isn't because humanity's imbued nature to fight has been suppressed or weakened. It has simply been over powered by basic survival instinct. The countries in the state of mind to launch a war against other countries wouldn't dare do so because a U.N. Coalition force would step in, as the Persian Gulf War demonstrated. In addition to pure militaristic power, there's a weapon that terrifies the entire modern world at the mere mention of it.

The Nuclear bomb.

Virtually hundreds of different human nations have the capabilities to produce nuclear weapons, and have likely produced more than a few. Some countries only have a handful of nuclear weapons, while others have thousands waiting to be fired at a moments notice, in addition to weapons-systems to counter nuclear bombs aimed against them. A war between any two small nuclear armed nations would result in the pure and utter destruction of both. A nuclear war between any two worldwide super powers would threaten to destroy the earth entirely, and every human on it. This concept is called 'mutually assured destruction', which is what currently maintains peace in today's society.

'Peace through superior firepower' is somewhat similar to this idea. Suppose a weaker species threatens a stronger one with conflict. Conflict can be avoided by a simple demonstration of the power the stronger species has. The knowledge of this power causes the weaker species to back down out of fear, which in turn will make them seek a peaceful alternative. The weaker species is still _willing_ to fight, but they won't because they know for certain that they'll lose such a conflict horribly. It is this concept that keeps the more violent countries from stepping out of line and attacking or oppressing one another.

It is through the combination of 'Peace through superior firepower' and 'mutually assured destruction' that virtually all large scale conflict is avoided in today's world.

If a weak species threatens a stronger species, than they only do so because they do not realize how weak they truly are in comparison, or what they risk in potential combat. If in this situation, the best route to insure peace is for the stronger force to demonstrate irrefutable proof of strength. This doesn't necessarily have to be a specific weapon or ability however. Anything that would make someone second guess fighting as a course of action can be considered as this.

This is how humanity has maintained superiority over the earth. They have regularly demonstrated both their weapons and proficiency to use them that struck fear into the hearts of non-humans, predominantly by using them upon each other in wars. They marched unstoppable armies against one another in bloody conflicts that no amount of individual strength could win. Humanity's own adeptness at warfare was so often demonstrated against one another that to simply look upon it scared away the very species that would've challenged their ownership of the planet. The clear demonstration of power that was inner-human warfare was greatly effective in ensuring that the weaker species and powers never dared to oppose them, lest all the weapons and skills humanity employed bare down upon them all at once. When simple demonstration failed, and the Youkai species challenged the human species, the Youkai were beaten in such a way that no race inhabiting earth has ever challenged the human race again for fear of ending up like the Youkai. It was even more frightening when they realized the entire Youkai species had only fought a tiny fraction of the overall human race based in between Europe and parts of Asia, yet been beaten horribly.

Peace between humans and non-humans is possible, but only when the human species possesses superior firepower. If not, then war, suffering, and ruin would be the only result. For what would be a world without the human sense of right and wrong to guide it?

xxXxx

* * *

The world was in anarchy.

With the existence of the Youkai revealed, the human population erupted into action. There were countless people debating how they should be reacting to monster kind. The most predominant question was whether or not they should retaliate. After all, the first impression humanity had of monsters were man eating beasts that killed and slaughtered people for no apparent reason but their own amusement. The second impression they got was that monster kind was attempting to negotiate peace, and distancing themselves from the genocide of Japan as much as they could.

People began to contemplate the issue very deeply, and debated very heatedly over the issue. People asked why such an obviously dangerous race should be allowed to exist alongside them. Others countered with the simple fact that genocide was never right or justified. This in turn was countered by the statement, 'Non-humans don't get, nor should they receive, humane treatment'. The issue of monsters was being heavily debated both by important bureaucrats and children in kindergarten, even more intensely months after being revealed.

The human race at this point could be divided into two groups.

There were the more forgiving humans who believed that all people, and monsters by extension, deserved equal treatment. They saw the Youkai as a species they could potentially befriend and grow side by side with on the planet. They figured the Youkai should be forgiven of the actions that the less peaceful of their kind had taken, as humanity would ask for same if they were placed in a similar situation.

Then there were those that absolutely despised the Youkai. They saw them as a brutal species that wanted nothing more than to take over the planet and destroy human lives. They wanted the Youkai to be ruthlessly hunted and murdered as they themselves had done to innocent civilians. The unofficial capital of these people were the countries neighboring Japan. The Japanese refugees had grown both scared and hateful after the initial shock of seeing the Youkai had passed. This in turn passed on to all the countries in the vicinity of Japan, as they figured it could've just as easily been them to suffer the same fate Japan had.

Even though the human species was greatly split on how they should handle the monster situation, there was one matter that every human agreed with fullheartedly.

They weren't as secure as they had once believed.

The human race wasn't nearly as safeguarded from outside threats as they had long believed. Every man, woman, and child, realized that if the land of the rising sun had fallen as easily as it did, than who was and wasn't safe from harm? The Youkai species had faced and actually somewhat weathered the combined might of China and the United States. The United States held the title of 'strongest military on the planet' and they, even with help from another super power's military, failed to completely overpower the Youkai forces. No matter how one cut it, the human race wasn't prepared to deal with the threats they were now faced with. So action was taken.

A new arms race was under way.

In the past, arms races were major boons to human development. Nations competed with each other to make the best military weapons and technology. Weapons and technology estimated to take decades to produce, were invented in scant months under arms races. Weapons of war were to be taken to a level far above their original functions. Their designs were to be altered and adjusted to perfection. New ideas and technology were to be developed and integrated into the armed forces.

Whether it would happen or not, the human species was preparing for war.

The previous years had been lax on military spending. Very few countries felt they needed a stronger military when the extent of their enemies reached pirates, raggedy militias, and terrorists. After realizing that aerial superiority was the secret to winning any war in this age, the vast majority of military spending went into building aircraft, AA weapons, smart missile systems, and as of late, drones of all kind. To a lesser extent, artillery was a major focus for countries to develop. The days of tank supported infantry charges ended after the conclusion of the Vietnam War. Firearms, superior communication equipment, and infantry training also saw massive growth and improvement, seeing as there was a larger demand for special forces in today's methods of war fighting. After all, a situation that couldn't be solved with an aerial strike more than likely wasn't a job basic infantrymen could handle.

This was all made for the purpose of fighting weak human forces that frequently caused problems to modern development. Even monsters considered all this to be somewhat overkill for enemies that tended to be little more than disillusioned citizens with guns.

When monsters made the spotlight, and the forces of the United States and China sent reports of the Youkai's strengths and weaknesses, the entire focus of weapons changed to account for those traits. Youkai were strong in close quarters but had almost no ranged ability to speak of other than looting human weapons. They also had thick hides or some other ability to make them resistant to ballistic weapons. They used this to weather withering barrages of firepower and engage the soldiers in close ranged fighting, where they held a high advantage. In addition, Youkai had the ability to adopt human bodies that concealed them perfectly (which was in blatant disregard to the law of conservation of mass). When under fire from heavy armor and air support, the monsters would scatter and be sent packing. Due to the nature of the fighting, the coalition forces of China and the U.S. had simply dug in to their positions, scanned for high Youkai concentrations with UAV's, and bombarded those areas until they were blackened craters. If something in that crater so much as shifted, they called in a second bombardment on the exact same area.

Arms races always focused on the fields that current military methods were weak in. In this instance, the average soldier wasn't equipped well enough to properly counter the threats that would await him/her. As such, this arms race would focus on body armor, hand held weapons systems, expendable combat drones, methods for singling out non-humans from the general population, and if possible, increasing the physical ability of the average soldier. In addition to making new weapons, all the weapons that had proven effective in the Youkai war were being improved. Air support was a pivotal role for fighting non-human armies. Gunships, bombers, and attack helicopters had been the main damage dealers of the entire conflict, cutting down entire swathes of Youkai infantry in mere seconds. Guided missile systems had proven effective for taking out specific Youkai positions with impeccable accuracy and precision. With the accumulation of all these, the fighting was heavily tilted in the humans' favor, yet they had still taken casualties in the thousands.

There was already a good base for which powered body armor, drones, and better weapons could be built. There were multiple exoskeletons that had been designed and tested on real military personal to improve performance, stamina, and physical ability. The only issue was that they were rather awkward to maneuver in, and made the wearer unable to immediately go into a full sprint. There were plenty of drones being designed, all of which were incapable of independent action. They had to be carefully controlled by trained engineers in use. Since it was usually more efficient to simply send a guy with a gun in his hands, rather than send a guy controlling a robot with a gun, the land drone department never saw much improvement. Of course, there were certainly going to be improvements made to drones now that their were countless potential uses for them in today's fighting.

The main issue however, were firearms. The weapons the average soldier used took much more than a handful of shots to kill a target. The bullets didn't have enough stopping power behind them to put down a charging monster, which forced the soldiers to set their guns to the fully automatic setting and hope the target died to a quantity of shots. It generally took nothing short of a point blank shotgun blast before a Youkai halted its charge, and if they were frequently getting that close, then the riflemen of that squad weren't doing their jobs correctly.

As such, higher yield bullets were much coveted for the restructuring humanity's armed forces would receive. .30 Caliber rounds were the bare minimum of strength that any soldier would want if they knew they were fighting monsters. Such rounds blew entire chunks out of an unarmored human, but would be perfect for putting down the thicker skinned of Youkai. .50 Caliber rounds blew out chunks from Youkai, and entire limbs off of unarmored humans. That was the sweet spot every soldier wanted to be at. Bullets that were certain to kill their targets were the weapons that many soldiers now lusted after. In many places, semi-automatic rifles were replacing assault rifles as the desired weapon of choice, simply for the stopping power and range they tended to have over rapid-fire weapons.

For fighting monsters and other horrors that inhabited the shadows, the arms market was now making a killing in profits. Guns that could kill a hardy target from a respectable range of at least 300 meters were in high demand, and development for such weapons was in full swing. Already existing weapons with a good amount of power behind them were flooding the markets. For example, China had taken to arming all of their APCs, Jeeps, and Tanks with .50 caliber turrets, rather than the low .30 caliber turrets they had before. The U.S. was now forcing all their armed forces to use .50 AE desert eagles as their new standard side arms, regardless of its fierce recoil problem. In addition, you could now find a fully loaded minigun as a turret on the Abrams tank.

The human species had gotten their noses bloodied in the Japan genocide for sure. However, they now knew how their enemy fought. They had a decent base of information to gauge how they would need to build their future weapons, and how to accommodate for whatever abilities the Youkai could use in combat. Even as they were tweaking their weapons from an 'anti-terrorism' base, to an 'anti-monster' base, they were also adapting their tactics and typical means of fighting to be more Youkai focused. There were countless missions underway from various nations to secretly map out the numerous Youkai villages and territories across the world. There were hundreds of background checks and DNA tests being made to find how many people in the human population were really what they claimed to be. They were being discreet about it of course, but they wouldn't hesitate to bring that knowledge out to the open the moment it seemed beneficial to do so. For instance, the CIA had identified the bank accounts and place of residence of nearly every vampire on their side of the world, and were prepared to freeze their assets and send armed men at them at a moment's notice.

If it ever came to war again, the human species wanted it well known to every species out there that there would be no surrender or yielding of any kind. It would be war until extinction, and they would be more than prepared if such a thing came to pass. This was sure to result in either a peace brought on through superior human militaristic power, or mutually assured destruction for every species on earth. Either way, however, insured that no species would take the planet earth from human hands. Sadly enough, the majority of humanities leader's were perfectly happy with this setting, and perfectly willing to go through with it if need be.

The entire planet of earth was effectively being held at gunpoint, and very few people even realized it.

xxXxx

* * *

The PWCD base of Ireland was on full activity.

An attack had occurred in a quite fishing village off the coast of Ireland. An entire population of people had been attacked by some sort of non-human entity. Since no reiatsu radars had gone off at the occurrence, it couldn't have been a hollow, shinigami, or spirit of any kind. That meant that it must've been a Youkai or a witch. Regardless, they had found out that an attack was underway the second that feed from security cameras had shown images of a figure attacking and sucking the blood of random human civilians.

The PWCD were quick to try and label it as a vampire on a blood rage simply for the fact it was sucking blood. Of all the Youkai with cannibalistic tendencies, only vampires went solely for blood. However, several things didn't match up. The 'vampire' in question was passively moving at hyper sonic speeds. To the PWCD's knowledge, only augments and werewolves could casually move at such speeds, while spirits with the ability to shunpo or sonido could do it in short bursts. This couldn't have been any normal monster. That alone made the PWCD order to have the creature killed and its body brought in for study and registration into PWCD databanks.

There was also the fact that if word of this incident got out so soon after the war in Japan, humanity was liable to go into an all out genocide on the Youkai species. The PWCD didn't necessarily have the well-being of the Youkai in mind, but they understood that a sizable portion of the Youkai were at least negotiable. The PWCD preferred not to allow the deaths of those who were beneficial to human interests, especially if a few of them were willing to forge alliances with human world powers over the Youkai monster clans.

Since this enemy potentially had the hitting power of a vampire and speed that rivaled that of augments, the PWCD was taking no chances.

A full 5-man team of augments along with a rail rifle armed Bunker suit were being deployed to the area by carrier. A team of augment commandos would've been preferred for the situation, but the nearest commando team was on the far side of Russia. Luckily for this particular PWCD base, they were a little under 2 hours distance away from the village by flight. This may have been overkill for the sake of killing a single vampire-like creature, but they weren't entirely sure that was what they were dealing with at all. It was, more often than not, better to have excessive force than too little force. The 5 augments were there to simply kill the creature and bring it back, while the bunker suit was there for support. By 'support' they meant that if this creature was, for whatever reason, resistant to normal bullets and other forms of attack, then the bunker suit would hit it with a rail rifle round. Thus far, Aizen was the only thing to be hit by such a round and not die on impact.

The augments routinely took drills for these scenarios when attacks would happen and they were completely unprepared. They were to be completely armored and equipped for combat in under an hour's time. While they underwent this phase, they were simultaneously being briefed on what few details they could get on the situation, and what weapons would be recommended for the conditions they'd be fighting under. Had they been normal special forces, they'd have anywhere from 12 hours to several days to prepare, but the PWCD had no such luxury. Unlike conventional enemies, monster attacks were often random and unpredictable. As such, a team of augments had to be ready for deployment at any possible moment. Today was a prime example, as no one would expect a Youkai invasion so soon after they had lost a massive war to humanity. They preloaded their magazines with rounds, cleaned their weapons daily, and had unrestricted access to their particular set of armor so long as they didn't do anything to it that would be compromising to their performance. Doing all this shaved an entire hour off the needed preparation time an augment squad would need before deploying. In the event of heavy suits, they often only took around 30 minutes to prep, as they were treated more as tanks. Their weapons and systems were charged, maintained, and loaded at all times. They simply needed an augment operator to hop into the armor, and they were ready for war.

The force of super soldiers were already well on their way to the location of the attack, and it had only been an hour and a half since the creature even appeared.

A single N'jal carrier flew across the skies of Ireland, heading straight toward the fishing village of Ireland at the highest speeds it could manage. The village had a small population of only 300 or so people at best. Even though they had gotten to the village in as fast as they could possibly manage, their was plenty of damage a monster of hypersonic speed and super strength could do if left unchecked for an hour and a half.

The PWCD came within 10 minutes distance of the village, and made any final preparations they needed to make.

They ran checks over their rifles, shotguns, and heavy machine guns, seeing if they would jam or misfire under any circumstance. Combat knives and the smaller throwing knives were being slid out of their holsters and checked for balance, sharpness, and good grip. Side arms were being drawn and checked for any foreseeable issues that may occur. The PWCD spec ops were viewed as second to none when it came to special forces branches, but that amounted to little when it came to actual fighting. When it was time for a fight, titles, rankings, and positions of power would all be worthless. Of course grasping this concept seemed to be more a problem for monsters than humans, but there was no sense in getting a bit of arrogance before a fight.

The PWCD carrier arrived to the village and was greeted to a sight that both infuriated, and disgusted the special operators.

There were people running back and forth across the town, with more than a few of them bent over motionless bodies. None of the super soldiers knew what was going on, but they assumed from what they had heard so far, that these people were still in confusion after the monster had attacked, and were simply in panic.

Unfortunately, they didn't have the time to instill order into them. They were here for the monster, not the people's peace of mind. Besides, killing the thing that was terrorizing them would do a lot more good than trying to organize them while wearing intimidating power armor and toting an entire arsenal of weapons. They were no longer concerned about hiding, as the PWCD's involvement in Japan had been caught on film by cameras, and witnessed by countless civilians who were in panic.

The carrier rounded the area and searched for any obvious signs of the monster that they could find. After all, the more powerful creatures got, the less subtle they tended to be. Their power usually went to their heads and made them feel that they could attack those weaker without any actual repercussions. The PWCD noticed a slight decline in this mindset ever since they had gotten to work on hunting the more hostile of the monster population, but there was still the chance it would happen.

Sure enough, there stood a single humanoid creature. It was in the form of a middle aged man, hoisting a much larger man up by his throat and draining the blood from his neck in a leisurely manner. The man he was holding struggled in vain, banging his fists against the creature's head to try and dislodge it, but his attempts grew more and more lax. Finally the man completely slackened while the creature hoisting him off his feet continued to drink from his now dead victim.

The creature paused and stared as he realized there was a large carrier circling around it. He wasn't as much concerned by the transportation vehicle itself as the rather large gun on its underbelly. The weapon swiveled of its own accord to face the bloodthirsty monster, and made a slight churning noise. The nose-mounted minigun opened fire.

_BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! _

Firing off hundreds of bullets in mere seconds, the creature yelped in surprise and sprinted out of the carrier's line of sight. It went behind a house before any of the bullets were able to hit the man-eater. The minigun continued to saturate the monster's general area with its minigun before it was certain that the monster would at least be hesitant about coming back for any reason. The pilot then acknowledged his live cargo, who was pretty eager to get their boots on the ground.

The vehicle came to a hover at 25 meters above the ground. The underbelly of the N'jal carrier opened, allowing the massive form of the bunker suit to plummet to the ground. The massive suit didn't make a large crater when it hit, but it was heavy enough for everyone within a quarter mile of the area to know that something big had landed. The squad of PWCD spec ops followed the massive suit out, their falls much more controlled and graceful than the bunker suit's.

"Go get that bastard boys. I'll be nearby for reconnaissance and suppressing fire if you need it." The pilot stated

"Roger. We'll keep in touch." The augment squad leader ordered. He waited until the aircraft began moving away, then turned to addressed his squad mates "Aegis Team, we're going up against an unknown here. This situation can go any number of ways. Stay tight, stay alert, and maintain formation. From what Intel gathers, this type of Youkai can move as fast as us. In addition, we're in a close quarters environment. The stuff we've picked up from the war games should give you plenty of practice for this scenario."

"**I'll take point. Vampire powers or not, I have yet to meet something that's given this armor more than a nasty dent." **The Bunker suit operator stated.

The design of Bunker suits made it so that while the suit was nigh impenetrable to anything that could pierce 3 inch thick tank armor, it also forsook wearing helmet in exchange for wearing a full dome of thick armor. That dome had 6 cameras on the outside of the helmet that could adjust vision settings, and 6 screens on the inside of the helmet that allowed the wearer full 360 vision. This meant that while the suit was cumbersome to move in, it compensated for making the wearer incapable of being ambushed or snuck up on.

The Bunker suit pressed forward at a jogging pace, which was about as fast as his armor would allow him to go, his massive rail rifle tracking back forth in the devastated town for targets.

"Augments, I've got your target spotted. It's moving toward the dock, where a group of civilians are trying to escape by boat. I'll steer the thing away. Get there ASAP!"

No further prompting needed, the augments headed in the direction of the dock, using live video feed from the N'jal carrier to determine where they were heading. The 6 augments moved swiftly, covering all their directions with their weapons to evade possible traps. Monsters weren't really known for doing anything elaborate, but there were those few that were more intelligent than your average bear. They tended to be the ones who caused augments the most problems, as they had the foreknowledge to plan traps and tricks that often ensnared and killed any augments who got sloppy.

The second they entered the streets, they were presented a sight they couldn't possibly have prepared for.

There was blood everywhere. People were eating each other with crazed expressions, red eyes, and bloody smears covering their mouths. Their clothing was torn and dirty. They were making inhuman noises and aimlessly wondering around if they weren't currently eating a dead corpse.

"**What the fuck?"** The Bunker suit stated, his rail rifle immediately tracking targets, but hesitant to actually open fire on things that _seemed_ to once be human. Unfortuneatley, his voice amplifier had actually grabbed the attention of every single inhuman being present. Dozens of heads snapped toward the source of the voice, and their dead eyes locked onto the group of armored humans.

There wasn't a single thought through any of their heads that the obviously physically superior beings were a larger threat than they were. They didn't hesitate when they found themselves at gunpoint before they could even process the augments had moved. There was no sense of self preservation whatsoever in their eyes. That had assured it. These people were no longer humans, if their blatant inhuman actions were anything to go off of.

The PWCD special forces opened fire.

The false humans were sent flying back as the rounds slammed into their bodies at hypersonic speeds. The PWCD almost never used standard rounds as a rule. Seemingly every monster worth being labeled a threat had some sort of uncanny resistance to basic firearms. So to compensate, the PWCD only used rounds with armor piercing capabilities, stopping power, large areas of effect, or mixtures of the three. Had the ghouls been hit by normal rounds, they likely would've stumbled and fell, or maybe even continued charging if the round didn't hit anywhere vital.

Instead, they found themselves being taken off their feet by bullets that could punch through an inch of solid steel. The cannibalistic creatures in front were sent flying back into the rest of their kin, massive holes adorning their forms. Those in back found themselves being pushed back by the corpses of their own kind. Some of the bullets manage to completely pass through their intended targets and go on to hit whatever other horror was standing behind it. The bloodthirsty monsters were unperturbed by the horrendous ranged damage being wrought upon them by the massive super humans. Be it through courage, stupidity, or complete mindlessness, they pressed on with their ill-judged attack.

Sadly for them, the damage done to them had only come from 4 of the 6 augments.

The bunker suit and demolition man had both abstained from opening fire on the charging horde of creatures. The bunker suit withheld simply for the fact that his gun would be _too_ effective. Rail rifles were designed to be hand held cannons that could carve a tank open in a single shot. It was specifically made to take out the more thick skinned of hollows that would show up, but wasn't above being used to reduce S-class monsters and other such threats into red smears across the ground. Should the bunker suit fire, it'd kill every creature in a straight line in front of it...and then blow holes in the next two or three houses behind those creatures. The PWCD had a strict rule about unnecessary collateral damage for good reason. The operator of the bunker suit cursed, wishing he had brought a sonic cannon for the occasion.

The demolition man of the squad held his fire purely for the fact he was out of effective range. He was armed with an AA-12, which had a drum magazine for a larger amount of shots. At his distance, he'd definitely hit something if he aimed. However shotguns, especially fully-automatic ones, weren't made to serve that purpose. They were meant to spray crowds with obscene amounts of firepower at close range. So he simply held back and waited until the creatures got closer.

The six augments slowly backed into an alley while four of them maintained their fire on the crowd. Fighting multiple enemies in open ground was foolish, as you could be attacked from all directions at once. In a narrow passage like this, the creatures would probably wall themselves off behind a mountain of their own dead if they tried to get through. Worst case scenario, the Bunker suit fires a single shot and clears the way so that they can simply bulldoze through.

The red eyed creatures all sprinted at the augments, but were getting picked off at a rapid pace. Three of the augments firing on them were armed with assault rifles, while one was armed with a heavy machine gun. If their rounds didn't strike a vital area and kill the monsters on impact, the stopping power behind the bullets would put them on the ground regardless. They may get up and ignore the gaping holes in their bodies, but they were still being slowed down significantly.

By this time the augments had slowly began squeezing themselves into the narrow alleyway. The Bunker suit was in front, seeing as his massive armor made this situation completely nonthreatening to him. He could easily force his way through the throng of crazed people if need be, without fear of being hurt. The rest of the augments shot around him in controlled, but slightly prolonged bursts of fire. The crazed civilians were now trying to crowd inside the alley way to get to the augments, but the heavy duty rounds coming at them were repeatedly hurling their bodies back into the frenzied crowd of crazed humans.

Finally the, AA-12 armed augment opened fire. He didn't bother firing in bursts, or even aiming. He simply held the gun at hip level, pointing it in the cannibal's general direction, and proceeded to jam the trigger down and not let it go.

_**BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!**_

AA-12 shotguns normally just used basic buckshot rounds that could be found in any old hunting rifle. The PWCD, while acknowledging that the buckshot was capable of doing a lot of damage at close range, wasn't powerful enough to put down monsters as effectively as they'd like. So they replaced the buckshot shell with a _slightly_ higher caliber shell.

The crowd of cannibals seemed to start exploding with gore as the AA-12 fired at full automatic into their ranks. The creatures being congested into a huge mob of bodies, the AA-12 was almost overkill for how effectively it dealt with them. The creatures didn't even seem to be moving forward anymore as the higher tier shotgun rounds slammed into them with repetition. The shotgun shells were not only blowing them apart, but physically pushing the horde of creatures back. The bodies not already littering the ground were practically thrown out of the alley and back into the dirt road, their forms being completely mutilated by the onslaught. Heads disappeared, chests were blown wide open, and entire limbs were removed. The other 4 augments eventually stopped firing and simply watched, feeling rather redundant due to the display of firepower they were witnessing.

The shotgun toting augment finally released the trigger when the cannibals stopped running into the alley, not that they so much as got a step in once they were inside the field of fire. The barrel of the automatic shotgun was smoking from the extreme heat after its barrage of shots.

The Bunker suit finally came back out the alley, withholding the urge to vomit as he walked through a small hill of dead bodies. Were it not for the ruined articles of clothing that could be seen, no one would've recognized that this pile of flesh and blood was once a sizable number of human beings. Aegis team followed the Bunker suit out, tracing back and forth for more targets with their rifles.

Scanning the area for anymore cannibals, the Bunker suit reported that the area was clear. No contacts of any kind were apparent, and the PWCD operatives were very grateful for this. They had already expended nearly half of their ammunition simply killing off the crazed creatures that were once fellow humans. If another horde of crazed humans showed up, they may wind up fighting a possible S-class level Youkai with little more than knives and bare hands. They were indeed trained to do so, but never willingly put themselves in such a postilion, and they didn't plan to start.

"Pilot, we have a situation. The people here have been turned into monsters. They were just eating dead bodies before we showed up."

"My designation for this engagement is 'Hummingbird', not- Wait what? What happened over there?!"

The leader of Aegis team paused, looking around the street. There were probably just under a hundred dead cannibals if he had to make an estimate, and nearly half of them were bunched up in the alley that had previously been used as a choke point. He didn't really realize it at the time, seeing as they all looked the same when in heat of the moment, but there were quite a few children sprinkled throughout the crowd of monsters. They were just as feral and bloodthirsty as their older counterparts, which made them nearly indistinguishable. The Aegis squad leader didn't know whether or not to be happy about that.

He looked even harder than he really meant to, and saw that a few of those bodies had bite marks and chunks missing from them that weren't caused by their own rounds. It seemed as if them eating each other wasn't simply a disgusting act, but the manor they went about spreading whatever caused them to be like this. 'Cannibals' didn't even describe these creatures anymore. 'Zombies' were more like it.

He snapped back into reality when 'Hummingbird' repeated his question in an even louder voice. He sighed. "Believe me. You're better off not knowing."

"That monster we're after is causing this, isn't he? This new creature shows up, and now all of the sudden normal people are turning into Cannibals." The pilot growled.

"**Where is that thing right now?"** The Bunker suit broke in, his voice tinted with rage, even through his voice amplifier.

"I cut it off from reaching the dock and routed it back into town. The people on the boat escaped safely. The creature is now back tracking through the town, but I can't figure where specifically. It's somewhere near the marketing district, a quarter mile to the north of your current position. Sending you live feed through your helmets right now." 'Hummingbird' reported.

"Copy 'Hummingbird'. Aegis squad, form a loose diamond formation. Bunker suit you bring up the rear. Kill the target on sight. Preserve the body if you can." The Bunker suit simply made a non-committal grunt, knowing that almost anything he shot couldn't even be labeled as 'remains' afterward.

"Roger Aegis actual. I'll be sure to try and monitor it, and if I can, steer it towards your position. Hummingbird out."

And so the augments were on the move once more. They were slightly disturbed from having to fight and kill creatures that were once civilians, but were still completely able in both body and mind. They would remember this fight for a long time, as only more of these battles would come in the future.

xxXxx

* * *

In the world of Hollows, there was a new hierarchy being put in order.

A group of humans in odd robes had suddenly appeared in what many considered to be the very capital of Huecco Mundo, Las Noches. They had unhesitatingly cut down every hollow that made to attack them without hesitation. They wielded strange reiatsu bows and arrows that cut through the hollow population like butter. The beasts couldn't even get close as the men and women coldly and calculatingly removed any and all opposition. Their aim was flawless, their calculated attacks perfect, and their overall disposition dispassionate. These individuals weren't hardy war mongers, nor were they overly arrogant warriors. These were professional killers whose discipline rivaled that of the PWCD special forces.

They were Quincy.

The Meta stood by during all of this, simply watching these events unfold before their eyes. They held no particular interest in helping the hollows. After all, they would've likely killed more than a few of those creatures in the long run, regardless. They weren't quick to label the Quincy as potential allies either. The reiatsu enhanced humans seemed to be actively assimilating the few sentient and self-conscious hollows they could, while striking down those who apposed them directly. The Meta wasn't blind. They recognized an attempt at annexation when they saw it, and the actions of the Quincy certainly spoke of just that.

More than that, the Meta saw something that disturbed them.

One of the Quincy, presumably their leader or upper tier superiors, was spotted with the hogyoku in his possession. The Meta had assumed the PWCD would take the hogyoku and destroy it once they found Aizen's body. However that didn't happen. This meant that the Quincy had either gotten to Aizen's body first, while amidst all the radiation in the area, or they took it from the PWCD. Seeing as no PWCD base had ever been attacked before, they were inclined to believe the first theory. The Meta couldn't confirm or deny either of the theories however, so they simply kept a keen eye on Las Noches, occasionally infiltrating it for more information.

The Quincy were incapable of sensing the Meta by reiatsu because they could lower it so that it blended with the usual reiatsu rich air of Huecco Mundo. They couldn't find them as the Meta was still very adept in stealth. Their armor's reiatsu battery still fueled the basic functions, but the damage it had sustained removed its cloaking capabilities. Even still, the Meta was fully capable of sneaking in and out without being seen. The only incident to occur was the Meta having nearly been spotted by a Quincy sentry, and if they had been spotted, they could've sonido'd behind the man and broke his neck in milliseconds.

At that thought, the Meta paused.

The hybrid's more apparent augment origins influenced their actions greatly. As an augmented commando of Beta team, he was accustomed to infiltrating, sabotaging, and assassinating his way through every threat he encountered. Anything that wasn't a human civilian or a fellow augment was a target to be killed on sight. Ever since he had melded with an Adjuchas class hollow from the late Szayel's experiments however, they had now began to lash out at everything due to a brief period of insanity and loathing for all those around them. With the passing of time, and venting on the more unfortunate hollows, the Meta's mind had settled into an equilibrium. They weren't of a human state of mind anymore, but they could now rationalize their actions to a better degree. And with this feeling, the Meta realized they were without purpose. They spied on the Quincy because it was the response their augmented half would've immediately went to in this situation. They killed so frequently and unnecessarily because the hollow half had fighting imbued as second nature. The Meta contradicted itself on every action, yet oddly enough, both halves had taken an interest in the Quincy's movements.

They didn't go in with a goal in mind, or a plan in action. They simply felt that with all the skill, strength, and overall power they had come by through cooperation with each other, they were meant to do more than simply hunt random hollows for sport. The Meta leered as it watched another group of Quincy leave Huecco Mundo, careful to not be detected either by the Quincy or any nearby hollows.

They hissed with anger as they spotted several non-Quincy humanoids in their ranks. Bone fragments covering portions of their faces, swords and other melee weapons on their persons, and reiatsu signature that couldn't possibly be anything but a hollows, all pointed to one conclusion. Arrancar.

The creatures were the usual beasts that ran rampant across the sands of Huecco Mundo, but given Shinigami powers to greatly boost their already potent ability. With those powers however, their bodies were altered to a more human shape as a result of the process. The Meta knew of them all too well, as they had been responsible for driving the arrancar population of Huecco Mundo to extinction. Many of the arrancar were indeed more powerful than they were, but the Meta was also an ex-augment commando. They were faster, more precise, and more ruthless than any hollow, shinigami powers or not, could ever hope to be. The Meta realized that this meant the Quincy were producing an arrancar army with the hogyoku, just like Aizen did. As well, they may use the hogyoku to enhance their powers to the point of being nearly invulnerable, just like Aizen had.

At that moment, they decided.

The Meta didn't know any specifics about the Quincy past their name, and even that had been gleamed from simply listening in on their conversations. They didn't know what their overall plans were, concerning what they would do with this new arrancar army. What the Meta did know however, was that they would kill them all. They were truly without purpose or reason, so they began to wonder why they would need it. The Meta made the perfect killer.

They were ruthless, aimless, and had absolutely nothing to lose at this point. If there was truly nothing left in the world for them to care for, than why not enjoy their existence as well as they can, by doing the one thing they were perfect at?

The Meta stood to their full height, dropping their attempts to conceal their presence.

They no longer had any desire to serve another power. They were abandoned in at Las Noches by the PWCD and their fellow squad mates. They were captured and experimented on by Aizen and his hollow army. They were hunted by the shinigami like animals. They wanted nothing more than to see them dead, so they would return the sentiment ten-fold. Their would be no more attempts to rationalize their existence, as their was no rationality to be found. They no longer wanted a purpose, for they now had one that they would pursue until death.

They were doomed to fight until they died, simply by the way they were. So if death in combat was an inevitable fate, than they would be sure to drag down as many as they could with them. They would fight, they would kill, and they would destroy _ALL_ of their enemies until they themselves were killed.

And they weren't dead yet.


	4. Rigor Mortis

**Rigor Mortis**

'Fear'

Fear is the emotion that drives all living things to a certain degree. We build homes because we fear living in the dangerous wilderness. We make weapons because we fear the idea of getting into a fight and losing. We purposely avoid doing things that could hurt us because we fear pain. We keep ourselves safe and secure because we fear death.

It's fear that motivates us to fight, as we know that running isn't a viable solution. Fear motivates us to learn from our mistakes, so we do not suffer the same pain twice over. Fear inspires us to hate the unknown, for the unknown could possibly harm us.

Only a fool wishes to be fearless, for without fear, you would have no survival instinct, no reason to avoid harm, and overall, no reason to live.

XxXxx

* * *

Aegis team was closing in on the hostile.

The creature who had been the cause of all the destruction was pinned down inside the local supermarket. The N'jal carrier chased the blood sucker into the building, and hazed the building with fire at the slightest sign that it may try to sneak out. The creature may be able to dodge a few bullets, but the minigun fired hundreds of bullets in a couple seconds. The vampire-like monster could maybe dodge one or two shots before it was caught under enough hot lead to reduce it to a smear. The carrier was maintaining a hover to the left side of the building, which gave it a perfect line of sight to the front, back, and left side of the supermarket. The only means of escape that wouldn't put the monster in line of sight of the carrier was the right side of the building.

Which was the direction Aegis team was moving up from, with the bunker suit bringing up their rear.

The vampire was apparently resilient to damage, considering that the pilot swore that he had hit it at least one time with his minigun, but it was not bulletproof in the slightest. That information was all the augments needed to hear to know they'd bring back the monster in a body bag. Firearms tended to be little more than attention grabbing devices when they dealt with higher threat level creatures. The most notable case was their war with the arrancar, who by nature had skin as hard as reinforced steel and overwhelming strength. The augments had to practically re-learn how to fight in order to deal with the evolved hollows reliably. The augments here were very grateful that this particular mission wouldn't be as stressful now that they knew the weapons they worked so hard to maintain would actually be useful for the engagement.

Though it was here that they made a miscalculation.

The vampire-like monster had somehow established control over the cannibals he made and was ordering them to try and swarm his would-be ambushers. While the creatures weren't much of a threat individually, they did two things that made them quite annoying for the PWCD forces.

The first thing they did was act as cannon fodder. The PWCD soldiers found themselves facing so many of them that they eventually had to conserve ammo by willingly closing into CQC combat with them. While the augments tried to be as efficient as they could in evading the already dead bodies, they wasted precious minutes doing so, which gave the target creature more time to try and slip away.

This brought them to the second point. The blood sucking monster may be hiding among the zombie population, using them as decoys. It could either sneak up on the augments under disguise as a zombie, or do the exact opposite and wander off while the augments were busy. This situation made things nearly impossible, as the PWCD special operators didn't have any equipment with them to single out a specific monster species from a group. They went in under the assumption that they'd be fighting a single powerful monster, not an entire monster army.

The augments of Aegis team 'jogged' toward the super market at 20 miles per hour, easily outpacing any zombies lunging for them. Those that ran at them were only able to do so at a stumbling pace, which made them near useless. The zombies in front of the augments however attempted to try and block them with a wall of bodies. They stumbled forward in a controlled walk, keeping within a set distance of each other. They were almost in rank and file, which meant the creature controlling them knew exactly what they were trying to do, and feared them enough to try and slow them down in order to escape.

The augments of Aegis team were only a block away from the supermarket, so with no other alternative, they picked up their jog into a full-on charge.

The 5 super soldiers began hip firing into the horde, their bullets scoring very few kills, but doing wonders for sending the horde of cannibals to the ground. The 3 assault rifle armed augments fired in paced bursts, sending one or two zombies to the ground with each burst. The heavy machine gun armed augment simply jammed the trigger down, making every oncoming zombie fly off their feet the second his weapon flashed in their direction. The automatic-shotgun armed augment was simply blowing a path through, making every zombie that entered his line of sight get blasted apart in a horrific and bloody manner. They all moved and fired without breaking stride.

When they got within touching distance of the first zombie, Aegis team's squad leader dropped his shoulder and completely blitzed through every zombie in his path. He was over 600 pounds of speeding heavy armor and muscle. The zombies in his path were all tiny in comparison to his massive frame, and were completely plowed over. The rest of the squad followed his example and either plowed through or evaded the zombies as they got around the horde.

The window of the supermarket exploded outward, revealing a creature that looked deceptively human. However, it was much too pale to be considered anything but an albino. It had blood-red eyes that narrowed at them in frustration. Its mouth wasn't as messy as that of the other ghouls, but it had clearly been drinking blood. As well, unlike the others, it clearly displayed intelligence, seeing as it began sprinting toward the fishing docks immediately after spotting the augments. The Aegis team squad leader was immediately on alert as he saw the creature flee in a direction that evaded them, and still gave it cover from the N'jal carrier's nose-mounted gun.

It was the very creature that had caused all this in the first place.

"Target spotted! Don't let him escape!" The squad leader bellowed, pointing at the creature as it began fleeing.

The augments cleared their way through the army of undead that tried to wall them off. The team of 5 augments began their pursuit of the vampire, running down the same dirt road it had taken. The N'jal carrier immediately noticed the creature's attempts to escape and began to move away. The pilot knew that it was likely heading back to the dock to escape into the water. So the best counter would be to get there first, and wait for it with its minigun already warmed up to fire.

"Hummingbird to Aegis actual, target is moving to the docks again to attempt an escape. More than likely it's gonna try to swim out through the water. I'm moving to cut it off."

"Roger Hummingbird. We're in hot pursuit as we speak. Light it up if you see it. Bunker suit, move toward the docks as well. You're currently closer to where it's fleeing than any of us."

"**Copy." **The heavy armored augment grumbled, apparently not liking that he was chasing a target in a suit that wasn't made with swift movement in mind.

The dead apostle cursed as he ran through the back allies.

He called every single one of his minions to protect their master, hoping they'd be successful in slowing down the humans on his trail. He dipped into another alleyway, hoping his sporadic trail would throw off both his hunters, and that accursed aerial vehicle that insisted on trying to shoot him the second it caught sight of him.

The vampire ran past a small group of zombies, immediately ordering them to cover his rear as he escaped. The zombies simply groaned with their usual dim-witted expressions and ran forward, hungering for the flesh of the humans that their master had promised would come.

A single augment came at them, a rifle in his hands, but oddly holding it so that the rear of the gun faced the zombies instead of the actual barrel.

Aegis 3 smashed the butt of his assault rifle into the forward zombie's throat, severing the bone in its neck easily. Following his momentum, he right elbowed one of the nearby creatures in the side of its head, shattering the side of its skull from the force of the blow. The one directly in front of the augment was also the furthest to the rear, which gave the augment a bit more room to work with. Aegis 3 took a running jump into the air and brought his knee forward, square into the cannibal's nose. The 3 zombies struck went flying from the pure momentum behind the blows, while the ones left untouched tried and failed to catch the augment before he continued running after their master.

The zombies barely got the chance to follow after the augment, as the second they turned their backs, explosive rounds tore into their bodies and blew them apart from the inside out. An AA-12 thundered loudly a handful of times as each shot found its mark on each of the ghouls still standing, the power of the shots nearly cutting the zombies in half. 3 more augments ran by them, not even giving a second glance to the creatures they had just annihilated.

The single augment that wasn't pursuing the creature by street, Aegis 5, had pulled himself up onto the roof of a house, and began jumping from house to house. This way, the augment could possibly get a clear shot on the target, while still keeping pace with the rest of the group. Should trying to snipe the target fail, he could possibly cut the creature off if it attempted to turn in a different direction or backtrack, as fleeing monsters often attempted to do when being hunted.

The dead apostle was clever, the augments would admit.

The vampiric monster was taking the route that went through as many zombies as possible. The creatures parted to allow their master convenient passage, but viciously attacked the 4 trailing augments that followed him. The augments found themselves wasting the majority of their ammunition clearing the way for their hunt rather than actually fighting the target. At the rate they were going, not only would the vampire escape by simply putting bodies in between him and his pursuers, but his pursuers would likely have very little to left to shoot him with if they finally did catch him.

Of course for Aegis 5, this wasn't an issue. The target didn't know that the augment was gaining on him by jumping from roof to roof. With no zombies to inconvenience him, no rough turns, or obstacles to obstruct him, he was easily going to catch up with the vampire.

As the blood drinker finally came upon the edge of the housing district, and within viewing range of the dock, a single shot rang out.

The dead apostle had absolutely no way of dodging. The bullet came streaking out at him long before the sound of the gunshot could alert him to the incoming projectile. The Aegis 5 had roughly estimated in his head where the dead apostle would be by the time his bullet reached the target, and adjusted to place the shot directly in front of the beast so that he'd run into it. Of course, he didn't stop at one shot. That was the beauty of assault rifles after all. You knew that one shot had your enemy's name on it. If you were unsure which bullet that was, you could just hold the trigger down until you figured it out.

The vampire-like monster cried out in pain as it felt a bullet strike him in the shoulder blade, and then a few more bullets tear into his back.

The creature staggered more from surprise than pain, and turned a corner to the left. The augment jumped to the nearest roof to the left, quickly reloading his gun as he kept up with the vampire. The zombie master called upon his minions to protect him, but they were truly unable to help. Even if they were fast enough to keep up, they couldn't hope to catch the augment while he was running on the rooftops. The vampire glanced up and felt his eyes widen at what he saw.

One of the super humans had caught up to him, and was currently trying to aim at him without sacrificing too much speed. The man was literally directly above him, chasing him from the roofs of the buildings he passed. The vampire glared and turned down the opposite direction, running in between yards. The augment leapt across the street and landed on the roof of the closest house, still keeping right on top of the vampire the entire time.

"Aegis 5 to Aegis actual, I'm right on top of the target and laying on pressure. The target's changing direction toward the left of the docks."

"Repeat Aegis 5, you said to the left? What area are you coming up on?"

The augment began hip firing down at the fleeing undead in short bursts of fire, which the creature managed to evade now that he actually knew the bullets were coming. However, his previous wounds were slowing him down. He needed to be focused and somewhat still in order to heal himself, and the stress of running for your life and being shot at made that more than a little difficult.

"I don't really recognize the area, but we're heading toward a 'Village Inn' sign."

"Good work Aegis 5, we're bringing up your rear so that it doesn't backtrack. Bunker suit, what is your current position?"

The nearby Bunker suit paused his jogging and stopped. He looked to his left and blink, realizing that he was right in front the Inn that had been mentioned.

"**I'm directly underneath the sign right now. Send the bastard my way." **The Bunker stated, a noticeable amount of glee in his voice.

"Hummingbird to Aegis Actual, I can move in right now and box him in." The pilot reported, still maintaining his hover over the docks.

The man in the suit absent-mindedly shook off all the zombies that were clinging to and gnawing on his armor. The Bunker suit could only barely outpace the zombies chasing him at full speed. The ones in front of him managed to latch on to his legs and start biting at his armor. Like any sane man, he freaked out having a bunch of cannibals dog-piling on his legs and feet. Then after a few seconds of flailing and yelling, he realized that they weren't able to get inside his armor, nor were they heavy enough to really slow him down. Bashing them with his rail rifle made him run the chance of breaking the thing just to re-kill a useless corpse. So instead, he simply opted to drag them along for the ride, losing a few and gaining a few along the way.

Now that he was actually in a position to attack, he couldn't afford the distractions.

The few that couldn't be shook off were forcibly pried/squished off by his massive gauntleted hands. Those he shook off but tried to re-attach themselves were stomped on, or hurled against a brick wall or something. The entire time he spent doing so, he pointedly didn't look at the creatures. He could already _feel_ the bodies being crushed and squished by his hands and feet. The last thing he needed was to actually see himself doing it.

The other 4 members of Aegis squad were having a bit of a tougher time moving.

Aegis 1 had his elbow firmly placed in a zombie's stomach and his rifle hand out to the side, ignoring the creature's attempts to bite through his forearm plates. He was using the creature as an improvised battering ram to force his way through the throng of zombies that were walling him and his squad off. There had originally been much more of them in the way, but with a combination of Aegis 2's AA-12 and a lot of grenade lobbing, an impassable horde was now an annoying large mob. The augments weren't wasting their time trying to fight the things, as they weren't so much a threat as they were a distraction. Whatever method of getting through them that went by the fastest wasbest.

It was somewhat humorous in a dark sense to see so many zombies getting knocked on their back by slamming into their own comrade, but no one dwelled on the situation as anything more than a necessity. The moment Aegis 1 bashed his way through the last of the undead, he threw the heavily abused monster to the side and went on with his pursuit, his 3 squad mates hot on his tail.

The dead apostle itself was nearing the Village Inn.

He couldn't move any other direction but straight. The black thing chasing him wasn't giving him any openings to turn left, and if he went backward he'd not only still have the black thing on his tail, but be getting closer to the 4 others chasing him. To make things worse, he could hear a familiar set of rotors coming from his right, which meant the carrier was bearing down on him as well. His only hope was to outrun this one and keep heading straight until he cleared the city. From there he'd keep a low profile until...

_**BOOOOOOOOOM!**_

_WHAT THE HELL! _The dead apostle shouted in his head.

A single massive projectile that was as big as small football came streaking toward him _through a brick wall _at high speed. The dead apostle was barely able to throw himself out of the way in time, before that same round could cut him in half. The undead could only watch in slight fascination as the round flew straight past him and into a parked car. The round didn't so much as impact the car and blow up, but rather punched a hole straight through it, and continue to go forward through yet another house. From there, the dead apostle could no longer see the massive bullet's trajectory.

The dead apostle was so stunned that he had almost died that he almost didn't notice the quartet of normal bullets streaking for his head.

The apostle rolled to the side to evade the bullets and dunked behind the nearest cover he could find, which happened to be a tree. He sat against the tree and pulled his legs to his chest to avoid taking any more bullets than he already had. The apostle didn't dare move as he felt multiple bullets pierce into the tree's trunk and land on both sides of his body, kicking up dirt and concrete all around him. Taking advantage of this brief moment of reprieve, he went to heal his wounds.

Sucking in a deep breath, time seemed to reverse across his body. Dried up bloodstains re-liquified and returned into their wounds. The bullets in his back slid out and clattered to the ground. The numerous punctures in his back closed back up, sucking in all **of** the leaked blood while doing so. The dead apostle let out a sigh of relief, feeling refreshed now, despite the fact he was under fire. Now to deal with those pesky huma-

_**BOOOOOOOOOM!**_

The dead apostle placed in a state of shell shock as the tree he hid behind was blown to shreds. The only remains of the tree were just high enough to cover him. Had the apostle been standing up, he would've lost everything above the waist to that single impact. The dead apostle had to reverse time on himself again just so that he could regain his hearing. The massive explosion had nearly deafened him. Still shaking out the ringing in his ears, the magical vampire looked over the remains of the tree to spot what had nearly killed him _again_.

"**-ammit I missed. Third ****time's** **the charm."**

By the root, what was that thing?

Standing in the hole of a brick wall, (the same one that the giant bullet had come from, he noted) was what could only be described as an armored behemoth. It was at least 12 feet tall. It had 6 'eyes', which were all facing different directions for some reason. It was clad in colossal armor, though the armor around its legs and hands were stained with a lot of blood. It was holding some kind of gun that was longer than he was tall! More importantly, that gun was pointing at him, and still smoking from its last two shots. The suit was also in a strange stance, with its legs braced and its arms bent; as if it was scared the gun it was holding may try to attack its owner.

The dead apostle got his answer when he saw another small football sized object streak out the barrel of the gun.

_**BOOOOOOOOOM!**_

The dead apostle hastily dived away from the tree's remains, watching as the massive bullet speared straight through the tree and slammed into the ground directly behind it. The dirt blew upward spectacularly, showering the area in sand and pieces of shrapnel. Had the apostle not moved, that shot would've turned him into a splatter on the dirt.

Unfortunately, he had forgotten about the other augment.

Aegis 5 strode toward the target, his rifle repeatedly barking as bullets were sent toward the creature. The apostle cursed and rolled away from his spot on the ground. However, that mattered little. There was an added bonus to being able to see bullets while they were in mid-flight. With a gun in your hand, you could trace the trajectory of where a bullet was going to land while it was still moving. As such, a gunman could adjust his aim with every shot so that they angled more to the direction they wanted. The dead apostle rolled out of the trajectory of 3 bullets, but found just about the rest of the magazine's contents zipping straight for his chest. Armor piercing bullets at that.

The dead apostle cried out in pain as he felt the rounds slamming into his chest. He was thrown to the ground by the sheer stopping power of the bullets, writhing and flailing against the ground as more and more bullets pumped into his abdomen. When his rifle finally clicked empty, Aegis 5 lowered his weapon to inspect the results. The target was a bleeding mess on the ground. The doctors at the PWCD base probably wouldn't appreciate having to remove 20+ rounds from the body on the autopsy, but then again, they weren't the ones who had to kill it in the first place.

Then, right as he thought this, the bullets suddenly were pushed out of the target's body. All the blood on the ground belonging to the creature suddenly retreated back into its body.

Aegis 5 hastily dropped the spent magazine and reached for a fresh one. Just as he slammed in the new clip, a powerful hand slapped the rifle out of the augment's fingers. Looking up from his currently empty hands, the shorter creature he had been hunting was right in his face. The target being about 5 ft. 11 and the augment being 7 ft. 3, there was very little intimidation to be felt by the human. However the augment silently wanted to yell 'DAMN!' at the top of his lungs, as he realized this particular monster type could heal itself from lethal wounds. He knew that his bullets had punctured the heart, lungs, intestines, and just about any organ worth being labeled as 'important'. Yet here the thing was, snarling at him with its fangs bared.

The augment threw a quick right hook to the creature's gut the second his gun left his hands, and felt some satisfaction as he felt the creature actually stagger a little at the surprise blow. The dead apostle launched a powerful hand strike at the augment's chest, attempting to impale the super soldier with his bare hands. The super soldier was slightly faster, and countered by grabbing the outstretching hand by the wrist and pushing it away from his body. He maintained his hold on the wrist and smashed his knee into the target's gut, feeling it bend over in pain.

Aegis 5 punched straight down into the back of the vampire's head with his left and threw a right uppercut to the creature's face. The target monster actually spat out some blood from the pair of blows, standing at its full height as a result of the uppercut. Taking full advantage of the monster's daze, he wrapped one arm over the vampire's shoulder, and his other arm under its armpit, locking both hands behind his back. The augment spun so that his hip was in the creature's gut and planted his feet.

Then, with all his might, he hip-tossed the vampire to the ground.

Augments only learned combat techniques that were confirmed to work firsthand. The hip-toss was a well-loved technique for the deceptive simplicity behind it. All you really did was hug your opponent, then turn and pull them to the ground. It was so easy that any old middle school wrestling team could perfectly execute it. Yet when done, it was beautiful and greatly effective to watch. The landing stunned your opponents so much that you had plenty of time to either kill them, pin them, or bind them, depending on the situation you were using the move in. It could be used so easily because it didn't rely one bit on strength, but simply leverage. Monsters to this day were still wondering how they had been slammed on their backs by humans who were several times weaker than them.

Aegis 5 monopolized off his opening by grabbing the first weapon that came to his mind. He ripped his knife from its holster on his shoulder, and stabbed it through the target's throat, feeling the blade imbed itself into the bone. Despite the fact that this was a vampiric creature, it was still pitifully weak in close combat. Superior strength only helped when you knew how to use it. If you had no proper form, training, or general skill to speak of, then a trained, seasoned soldier would walk all over you on their worst days.

The augment stood up, knowing that creature couldn't possibly survive past the next minute or so. If the stab itself doesn't do it in, it'll simply drown in its own blood now that its arteries are leaking blood into its windpipe. The knife wasn't removed, so it wouldn't be able to heal so long as the blade was there.

Aegis 5 turned to watch as the Bunker suit and his fellow squad mates jogged up to him.

"Nice kill Aegis 5. Keep this up and I may see you in commando armor eventually." The Aegis squad leader stated.

"Thanks Aegis 1, but it wasn't a big deal. These things aren't nearly as tough I thought they'd-"

_SHINK! _

"_Gah!~_"

The 6 augments all pivoted and leveled their weapons at the downed target, seeing it yank Aegis 5's knife from its throat and coughing up globs of blood. The dead apostle blinked and turned to face the augments. Due to the creature's skin color, it couldn't pale any more than it already had, but the 'oh crap' look on it's face spoke the story well enough. The dead apostle sat perfectly still, not daring to move a muscle. Apparently he figured if he didn't make any sudden movements, the chances of him surviving this encounter increased. Despite that, he simply needed to know about these things, and now was as good a time as any.

"Wha-What are you things? You smell of humans, but you can't possibly be-!" he target creature half asked, half demanded.

"Aegis squad, put him down." The squad leader ordered, not taking a moment to even humor the creature.

2 assault rifles, 1 heavy machine gun, 1 fully-automatic shotgun, and 1 hastily drawn side arm all opened fire into the dead apostle at once. Each and every single weapon was equipped with either armor piercing (AP) bullets, or explosive shells in the AA-12's case. Each and every gun was fired at point blank range. Each and every bullet had the stopping power to put a grown man on the ground. It wasn't until the squad members realized how many of them were actually shooting at once that they stopped.

Now Aegis 1 stood there, looking rather embarrassed with himself. When he said what he said, he didn't mean for the _entire_ team to shoot at once. Well yeah, the target was...dead now. But the PWCD Ireland base wouldn't be satisfied with the results. Maybe he could use the creature's healing powers as an excuse?

"Aegis Actual to Hummingbird, come in."

"Copy Aegis actual, this is Hummingbird. Did you get the bastard?" The pilot asked, some anger seeping into his voice.

"Oh yeah we got him. But we still need to do something about the rest of the undead here. We can't allow them to spread." Aegis 1 stated, trying to evade the subject of the target's status.

"Don't worry, I've sent the initial combat footage from your helmet cams to the base. Three more squads of augments and a PWCD hazard operation team is on their way right now for cleanup. Command however, wants us all to report in and deliver the target's body." The pilot stated.

**"Yeah Hummingbird. About that body."** The bunker suit stated, sending the pilot a digital image of what he was seeing.

There was a pause over the COM link as the pilot stared long and hard at the target monster's remains.

"...Oh Command isn't going to like this."

xxXxx

* * *

Inside the PWCD Ireland base, the debriefing room was entirely quiet. Despite 8 people being present.

6 unarmored augments stood tall in simple fatigues, they being Aegis team and the operator of the bunker suit. The one person of the group who wasn't augmented was the pilot, who stood alongside them, though he felt significantly less important beside the other 6 colossal human beings. They all looked straight ahead, fully prepared to get chewed out by the base's operations commander. He wasn't augmented, unarmed, and happened to be a measly 5 ft 6, which made him an ant compared to some of the giants in the room.

Yet even with all that, he still drove fear into the hearts of the 6 men in the room. With a full blonde goatee, brown eyes, and short muscular build, he was often called 'Napoleon on steroids' behind his back by his subordinates. It was only because he grew rather fond of the nickname that he didn't order everyone on the base to do a 10 mile conditioning run, monster attacks be damned.

"So. Your mission perimeters were clear correct? No misunderstandings. Nothing lost in translation. No typos or anything similar right?" The man stated, his slight Irish accent not taking away from his voice at all.

"No sir." They all said in unison.

"You were ordered to go in, kill this new mystery monster, and bring its body back for study. Did you misunderstand any of that?" He asked again.

"No sir." They all said in unison.

"Good! Well in that case, one of you can explain what the hell happened between receiving your orders and carrying them out, which caused this huge fuck up to happen!" The man barked in anger. Aegis 5 spoke up.

"With all due respect sir. The creature had regenerative powers. We mortally wounded it twice, yet-"

"Some 'regeneration' it had. You brought us back a **fucking **_**bucket**_! A bucket filled with dried up chunks of meat, some disjointed and fragmented bones, and a handful bullets lodged into every hole piece we could find was seriously the best you could do!? You couldn't even try to bring it back in the _shape_ of a body? You may as well have just cut off the thing's middle finger and dropped in on my office desk for how much use it is now!" The man took a calming breath.

No one said anything, knowing that silence and resigned acceptance was the best reaction they could give.

"You lot are the most experienced soldiers we have at dealing with these things, which is why we're going to need you in future missions. However, if you can't do something as simple as bring back a body, then what the hell do you expect us to do with you?"

"Sir, I accept full responsibility. My squad was simply following my orders." Aegis 1 stated.

The commander just looked at them, and shook his head. "We have no doubts that whatever that was, it was a complete unknown. Its DNA didn't match up to a single other Youkai we know about. Not even the vampires. In fact, the closest thing we could find that were related to this monster were the Chinese zombies that the Youkai gang in Hong Kong use, and even they were only similar in that they were both made of dead tissue that used some sort of magic to bypass the rigor mortis process. We would've preferred a full body to work with, but having remains is still viable."

No one dared to breathe a sigh of relief, but they were satisfied to know that they were at least somewhat out of the fire.

"Dismissed. Don't let something like this happen again."

xxXxx

* * *

At the far edge of the fishing village, agents of the Church and Magus Association stood by and watched.

Massive super soldiers were marching through the fishing village and opening fire on any undead they saw. Trailing closely behind the augments were men in hazard suits with flamethrowers. They were setting fire to all of the bodies, and in some cases getting DNA samples of those that they confirmed to be dead. In the air, no less than three attack helicopters hovered in the sky. The helicopters rained hot lead and missiles upon any gathering of undead that was even slightly noticeable.

While the 3 attack helicopters were doing crowd control, the augments were clearing out houses and rescuing any civilians that managed to survive by hiding. To ensure that absolutely no undead were left alive, UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) were sent out to every remote corner of the village and everywhere within 3 miles of the area to ensure that no undead had wandered outside the town limits. When UAV's located any zombies in a place that would be rather difficult to reach, one of the helicopters would swing by to fire on the position or a team of augments would move in. Either way, the threat was being neutralized accordingly.

And for the first time, the Church and Magi simply stood by while it happened.

Had this been some sort of raggedy militia with a fast response time, a government black operation team, or anything else, the Magus association would've attacked and killed them all. However, they weren't. Their soldiers moved with a speed that was nearly impossible to conceive. They moved and killed efficiently. They acted like they were well practiced in what they were doing. They were non-magical to be sure, but they were simply too dangerous to simply rush to attack. In addition to their forces being unpredictable, they had air support in the form of three attack helicopters. They may very well be dealing with a group similar to the Holy Church. A group of magical and non-magical humans who lived to hunt the horrors of the earth. They were better left observed and studied, rather than attacked. If they didn't know of the extent of this new party's enemies, they may make a powerful enemy needlessly. The magi stood by and watched as the PWCD laid waste to all the dead apostle spawns in the area, and then burnt them alive. They were tempted to attack when they saw the organization was rescuing people rather than killing them, but knew that they couldn't risk attacking and losing. So they watched quietly from the trees, observing the methods, tactics, and abilities that this new organization employed.

The Church agents were far less judging. This new power was exterminating the dead apostles for what they were. That alone gave this new organization positive points as far as the church was concerned. Their ways of fighting were too...new and loud for their tastes, but if they could manage it, then by all means. The Church members turned and left, trusting that this new organization would carry out their mission effectively. They had to report this to their superiors.

It seemed that the world was starting to run out of secrets to keep.


	5. Predators

**Predators**

The human psyche is a very strange and fickle thing.

In the first 20-30 years of existence, the human mind absorbs and studies everything around it, even subconsciously. This is because the human mind doesn't have a viable comprehension of the world around it, and abundant space to store all the necessary information. The mind falls back to the most abundant experience it can find in any given situation. When faced with fighting, the mind instinctively falls back to the most abundant wealth of fighting knowledge it has, regardless of whether or not it's the best source of knowledge to go to. And this applies to more than just fighting. It does the same in all matters, ranging from interaction with other people to solving a complex problem. With every encounter, the human mind stores and saves the data gathered for future reference. In this way, should it encounter the same issue later, it will be better prepared and better able to respond.

It's for this reason that people value experience more than anything else.

In fighting, training is helpful, but can be easily forgotten or used incorrectly when the time comes to apply it. Physical ability is helpful, but there are a multitude of ways for sheer brute force to be evaded and countered. Experience is the best source of power, as someone with experience will be confident in what they're doing. After all, they've experienced the situation enough to know what the end result will be should they take a certain action. Obviously, no one thing can determine the result of a fight with certainty, but the trait of experience tends to have better results.

xxXxx

* * *

The Quincy troops were in a state of deep confusion and panic.

They had been busy enforcing their rule on the local hollow population. Their arrows spelled certain destruction for the hollows that resisted. Their calculations and adaptability made them decisive fighters of unparalleled skill. Vasto Lorde, Adjuchas, Gillians, and any other hollows that dared to appear before them were easily destroyed or indoctrinated. Yet despite all of their abilities, something new had presented itself.

Quincy patrols were steadily being murdered. And not just them either. The Quincy, along with any hollows in the area, were all found dead. The method through which they were killed was always brutally efficient. Some people were found with their throats slit, while others showed evidence of having their necks and backs broken or crushed. Only a small minority showed any proof that they had been hit with a reiatsu based power, or killed through 'conventional' means. Nothing aside from dead bodies was ever left to indicate that something had been there, which worried the Quincy to a degree. This meant that whoever or whatever was out hunting their patrols, it couldn't be sensed or tracked. They would only be able to fight it when it willingly appeared, and if they sent someone too powerful, the creature hunting them would simply continue hiding. If someone too weak was sent, they'd simply be wasting manpower by sending people to their deaths.

At first, it had been assumed that there was a group of rather resourceful hollows picking off patrols. This had been debunked when it was discovered that none of the bodies showed any evidence of being eaten or showing wounds that were similar to what a hollow would cause. When the Quincy body count had reached over 30 people, 2 of which were valued personnel, the higher ranked Quincy were sent to dispatch this mystery killer or if possible, annex the unknown killer into their ranks.

The group sent to take care of this nuisance had consisted of 3 arrancar, 8 basic Quincy troops, and the hunting captain supervisor of the Quincy; Kirge Opie.

As the hunting captain, this mission practically had his name written on it. He had more experience with dispatching hollows and rogue arrancar than any of the other Quincy there. And even if he didn't, this mission was a hunt. It was quite literally in the name of his job, 'hunting captain'. In addition, his powers made it so that he could easily absorb this creature's powers for use if all else failed. Sure it'd only be temporary if such a situation played out in such a way, but it'd be better than losing the power of this creature entirely. The powers that allowed a single creature to kill so many people so decisively must surely be great, and the Quincy wanted it.

To begin the hunt however, many Quincy were rather confused on how to go about it. They normally planned extensively for encounters, with the exact location of their enemies usually being the very first thing they learned before they considered making a move. This mysterious killer didn't attack in any predictable patterns. Some groups and patrols were killed deep in the menos forest. Others were killed just a few miles away from Las Noches. At one point, a dead sentry had been found in the very halls of Las Noches, his neck broken and his expression frozen in petrified shock. There wasn't really a designated area for the hunters to start looking, which more than likely meant that they'd have to simply wonder around Hueco Mundo and encourage the mystery creature to ambush their group.

And suddenly, a significant burst of reishi energy in the menos forest alerted the Quincy of a hollow presence. At the moment, none of their arrancar auxiliaries had any business being in the menos forest, which made it very likely that it was the creature they were looking for.

They couldn't be sure if the mystery creature was making its move, or just a random Adjuchas level hollow, but they didn't dare miss a potential opportunity to apprehend their target. The power that was demonstrated was certainly powerful and noteworthy, but nothing that could stand up to the power of the Stern Ritter or such. It was likely that this particular enemy simply had a specialized ability that enabled it to sneak attack their opponents in swift succession, or some other ability that yielded similar results. There were arrancar and Quincy that had been killed that were much more powerful than the power that was currently being emitted. Either the monster that was hunting Quincy patrols was more powerful than it let on, or it simply had an unorthodox ability. Either way, the combined force consisted of the hunting captain supervisor, some of his best men, and 3 of the more powerful arrancar that could rival many of the Stern Ritter. This new threat stood no chance. They rapidly entered the forest, ignoring any nervousness the dark woods may produce.

Kirgo Opie was in mind stride with his 'hirenkyaku', when it happened.

His men were moving in a tight formation, which would allow them to be in optimal position in the event of an ambush. His 8 men formed a diamond formation with the hunting captain and his 3 arrancar in the center. On paper, it was a brilliant tactic. Anything that would attack didn't have an unsupported target to gun for, with everyone in being in such close proximity of the others. However, like all battle plans, it never survived contact with the enemy.

The Quincy covering the rear of the formation prepared for another hirenkyaku jump, feeling his body already begin to speed up for a brief acceleration. One moment, he was calmly taking another routine step, staying in close formation with his comrades.

The next second, he found himself impaled through the chest, unable to yell as the blade pierced his lungs and sliced through his spinal cord. The moment the body touched the ground, the blade was quickly yanked clean out of his chest. No one was able to react fast enough for what happened next. The other 11 members of the hunting party were only beginning to comprehend that one of their own had fallen when the two closest men to the threat were sent flying forward, a pair of balas forcing their way through both of the men's chests as they screamed. Realizing they were under attack, the 5 surviving hunters brought their bows to bear, finally catching a glimpse of the being that was no doubt their target.

And it was bizarre.

It couldn't have been a normal hollow, and couldn't possibly have been an arrancar of theirs. It was clad in damaged white armor. It was apparently outfitted with an assortment of weapons and equipment that wouldn't be out of place on a conventional soldier. Its weapon seemed to be a bastardization of a gun and a sword fused together. The creature clearly had arrancar powers, as it had sonido'd directly into their midst and killed 3 people, two of which with a rapid bala attack.

They assessed all of this in the split second it took for them to raise, aim, and fire their arrows.

The Meta was faster. They ducked, dipped, and dodged between each arrow with ease. The arrows not only seemed to be much slower than bullets, but their large profile and bright color made it easy for the Meta to see their trajectory and evade. Not wasting a moment of time, the Meta sonido'd out of sight, quickly lowering their reiatsu level to a near untraceable level.

The remaining 9 combatants were left in shock. Their target literally appeared for scant seconds, murdering three of their number, evading their retaliation, and disengaging before it could get boxed in.

The Meta was no fool. They knew they couldn't hope to overpower that entire group in a head-on fight of attrition. They were fast indeed, but they also felt fatigue. They would eventually feel physically tired if they tried to outpace not 1, but 12 people at once. They would only tire out and eventually be killed using that method. So instead, they would whittle down the group, going from weakest to strongest. The weaker Quincy could support the stronger of their number with their arrows, allowing them to use the full weight of their number against them. The Meta wanted them as scattered and unsupported as possible.

The Meta paused and hid amongst the massive trees of the menos forest. Their enemies didn't know the Meta's location, only their general direction, seeing them sonido to the right before cloaking its presence. This group hadn't simply been wandering around like the previous ones. They had come straight for them the moment they flared their reiatsu for a brief moment. They had come specifically to destroy them, and the Meta silently promised them that they would fail in their endeavor.

The hunting captain had silently watched as the hostile arrancar moved. The 3 friendly arrancar surrounding him had been worried and shaken from the surprise attack, and now had their weapons poised to strike. His remaining 5 hollow hunters had their bows notched and aimed at the surrounding forest, forming a circle around the group. The arrancar hesitantly stepped forward to fill the formation gaps that their recent casualties had caused. The forest was silent as the hunting party reconsidered who was actually being hunted at the moment.

He didn't wish to admit it, but the enemy had unnerved him. It was agile and deliberate in its actions. This hollow didn't simply make a desperate hit and run, it was actually calculating and showing forethought in its attack strategy. It didn't flee out of fear, but simply to disengage and set this battle to its own pace. With the odd ability to conceal its reiatsu, it was virtually impossible to find the creature until it powered back up. And if it powered back up, than that meant it was already attacking.

Captain Kirge felt a smile tugging at his lips. This would be his best hunt yet.

xxXxx

* * *

Hueco Mundo was permanently locked into a nighttime setting. This usually meant very little to anyone who planned to fight here. No one ever made an attempt to conceal their powers and attacks. In fact, they usually tried to make their attacks as flashy and awe inspiring as possible.

This wasn't so for the Meta.

The blows that couldn't be seen were the most deadly. The Meta lamented having white armor that stuck out like a sore thumb, but at the very least it was dirty and damaged enough to not be immediately spotted in the dark forest. These Quincy were wearing glaring white uniforms that may as well have been fluorescent orange for how much good it did at marking them as targets. The Meta would've had a field day had they still had ammo for the rifle section of their weapon. The scaled down rail-rounds would've picked apart their so called 'hunters' like ducks had they made precise head shots with every pull of the trigger. Sadly, ammunition for such weapons were not only obscenely expensive, but hard to get a hold of in the real world without PWCD connections. The Meta had run dry on ammunition way back during the Karakura war.

Seeing as they couldn't afford any mistakes, they took hold of the M8 Kondra welded to their zanpakuto. A good yank, and the weapon was ripped off the sword. Giving it a slightly disappointed look, the Meta cast the weapon to the ground, as it would only be a hindrance at this point. Left with nothing but a curved blade with an inverted handle, the Meta secured the weapon to the lower back of their armor.

That hunter group couldn't be allowed to escape. Not a single one.

They had gotten a brief look at them, and had no doubt memorized as much as they could. The Meta would be attacked on sight regardless, but they couldn't afford for the next group of hunters to actually know what they were looking for when they came for the 'mysterious killer'. Of course this meant that this fight needed a careful approach. If the Meta launched a strong offensive, and their enemies powered up to counter, the intensity of the fight may cause reinforcements to come. If they attacked very selectively and only did minor damage every time to the enemy group, their enemies would simply retreat back to base, where the Meta would be forced to pursue and attack, which would lead to the first problem again.

So that meant that for optimum results, they had to attack repeatedly, but back off long enough for the Quincy to settle down their power levels.

With this in mind, the Meta made another attack.

The Quincy formation was steadily getting sloppier. 10 minutes had passed since the attack, yet the creature was still nowhere in sight. Many began to wonder if the creature was still there and that perhaps it had fled to safety. Now that the adrenaline of combat was fading away, the group of arrancar and Quincy were beginning to loosen up. All except for the hunting commander of course, who remained vigilant the entire time.

One man sighed and lowered his head to rub his forehead. "Sir, I can't sense anything. I think it left."

Without turning to face the man, Kirge spoke "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure. If it was going to run, why bother to attack us at all?"

The man glanced backward, looking at his superior with a cocked eyebrow. "Sir, this is a hollow we're talking about. It was probably jus-"

_BUZZ!_

The man could only manage to turn around at the sound of the noise before a large hand wrapped around his neck. The guy managed to get out a yelp of alarm before the Meta squeezed tightly, choking the man quite firmly but not actually killing him. Feeling the resistance in his neck, the Meta knew it could probably crush every bone in his neck if they pumped enough reiatsu into their hand, but decided to simply go along with their original plan of attack.

By now, the others were already spinning on their heels to aim at the Meta and kill it before it could get anyone else; even if it meant that they would have to shoot through one of their allies while he was still alive. They expected that their enemies would be surprised at the extreme ruthlessness of the Quincy. After all, very few expect the enemy to shoot through their own allies to kill them. On the contrary, the Meta had been planning that they would take that course of action.

The nearest enemy to the Meta was an arrancar male with a large axe-staff for a zanpakuto.

Not hesitating, the Meta lunged towards the man, bringing along his hostage for the ride. A multitude of Quincy arrows streaked toward the Meta, each aiming just ahead of them rather than directly at them. They were placing their shots to try and make the hybrid run straight into their arrows or awkwardly dodge and be off balance. They didn't succeed, but they were obviously taking steps to compensate for the speed difference, which raised the Meta's respect for their ability to adapt. They didn't succeed, not because their plan was imperfect, but because they never counted on an arrancar being smart or brutal enough to use a human shield. If an enemy would employ brutal tactics, then the Meta decided to simply be even more brutal.

The Meta's hostage made a strangled cry of pain when the arrows completely pierced through his back...just before the arrows exploded.

Smoke and specks of blood engulfed the area as the Meta continued to run, tossing the mutilated remains of their human shield off to the side before drawing their curved zanpakuto from their back. The arrancar had hesitated at the gruesome fate of his comrade. Even though his hesitation only lasted half a second, that was more than enough.

The Meta was upon him.

The hybrid didn't go straight for a swing that the evolved hollow may block or even deflect with their hierro. The Meta may be fairly powerful, but a casual swing like this certainly wouldn't kill most arrancar, or even break their skin. The individual before the Meta was certainly powerful enough that nothing short of a highly powered thrust would cut through him. So the Meta made a less obvious attack. They stabbed straight downward, directly into the center of the arrancar's foot.

"GAAAAAAGH!" The evolved hollow screeched, feeling immense pain as the blade cleanly passed through his foot and into the ground below. On reflex, his foot moved back in response to the pain, but that only made it worse as the blade didn't yield an inch.

The Meta left the blade where it was and went to work with their bare hands. The Meta's right hand wrapped around the back of the arrancar's neck and forced him to bend down. The other formed a fist and punched into the arrancar's ribs, feeling one break on direct impact. Building spirit energy into their fist, the Meta unleashed a point blank bala into the already wounded side of the arrancar.

The power of the attack should've sent the the enemy arrancar flying backward several feet, but his foot was still pinned in place by the Meta's sword. The arrancar screamed as he felt the combined pain of having the left side of his ribcage being shattered, and his foot being yanked violently while still pinned to the ground. The man fell flat on his back, yelling as his foot was cut even deeper by the blade because of his rapid movement. Quickly finishing what they started, the Meta yanked their blade out of the arrancar's foot and drove it back down into the base of his throat. At that spot, there weren't any bones or muscles in the way of the windpipe, only skin. The effort required to puncture the spot was laughably easy compared to how much effort impalement through the chest would require. A quick stab to the spot ensured that the arrancar would not only be unable to breathe, but have blood pouring into his windpipe, which would cause him to drown in his own blood. The arrancar in question clamped his free hand over the hole in his throat, feebly trying to keep pressure on the wound. He fell flat on his back, feeling the strength drain from him as he began to drown in his own life fluid.

Dispatching the arrancar had been carried out in the time frame of 1.3 seconds, leaving his allies virtually no time to go to his defense.

The Meta smoothly ducked out the way of a Quincy arrow aimed the back of his neck. They dodged again from a multitude of other arrows coming their way. The Meta retrieved their blade and sonido'd directly into the air, evading every arrow on ground level. Another sonido and they were back in the forest, concealing their reiatsu level and overall presence.

1 Quincy captain, 8 Quincy infantry, and 3 arrancar had been sent to kill them. So far, the Meta had killed 4 of their infantry and 1 of their arrancar. They were one man above half strength and now seemed to be panicking. They had seen 5 respectable fighters killed before any one of them could even swing back in response. They realized that not only were they too slow to react, but that the Meta was indeed strong enough to strike lethal blows.

The Meta frowned on the inside.

Depending on their orders and their personal will to survive, they may call a retreat soon or even be preparing to flee right now. Any decent military that suffers near 50% casualties without any gains to show for their effort would just cut their losses and pull back. They should know that if they were incapable of completing their objective at full strength, then they won't have a reliable chance at nearly half strength. On top of that, if they were to pull back now they would be able to share their newly gained knowledge with their superiors and inform them of what they're up against.

Despite all the common sense knowledge to simply retreat, the Quincy force consolidated their position and tightened their formation now that it was 2 men smaller.

The Meta, being an ex-PWCD commando in life, was baffled. There was nothing to gain in this situation, as the Meta demonstrated that it had every opportunity to escape unnoticed or continue picking off the Quincy one by one. The spiritually enhanced hollow hunters had to understand that they would gain more in the long run by reporting their findings than simply fighting to the death. After all, wars weren't won by dying for the cause, but by making the enemy die for theirs. And still, these Quincy refused to budge or admit that this engagement was lost.

The Meta decidedly cast the thought aside.

Their self-orders were to kill each and every member of this hunting party, which would have the overall effect of making the Quincy hesitant to leave the walls of Las Noches. If this particular group wanted to die as martyrs, then that only made their self-placed mission easier to carry out.

The Meta hid in the woods, listening in on their prey as they conversed, timing when the next opportune moment of attack would come.

xxXxx

* * *

Captain Kirge was thoroughly impressed!

This...creature was cunning to an almost horrendous degree! It was employing guerrilla warfare to selectively pick off the Quincy and arrancar hollow hunters. It only attacked when someone was leaving themselves open to a surprise attack, but never stuck around long enough to get dragged into a battle of attrition. Not only that, but the arrancar it had just killed was more powerful than it was, yet the creature still managed to succeed in killing him. This proved that this creature wasn't simply a powerful beast that got the drop on a few unsuspecting Quincy, but an actual ambush specialist. Even the way it attacked showed proof of it being a trained killer rather than a simple warrior.

So with that in mind, he decided that his subordinates would be of little more help than practice dummies in this scenario.

"Lieutenant Kiro." The Quincy in question grunted in response, not daring to risk a brief opening. "Take what remains of our group and report back to his majesty. I'll handle this threat myself."

The Quincy's eyes widened. Briefly forsaking his own safety, he turned and barked to his superior. "Sir, no disrespect intended, but we can barely fight this thing as it is! How can you hope to by yourself?"

Kirge smirked, adjusting his glasses with the hand that wasn't holding his polearm. "This creature is hiding within the forest, using the denseness of it to conceal itself. If I remove enough of the forest, it'll have nowhere to hide. And since it's been avoiding a straight up fight this whole time, we can safely assume that it has little to no ability for fighting in the open."

Kiro gave his commander a look and nodded, "Alright men, we're pulling out! This creature was able to penetrate our diamond formation, so forming a 'V' is the next best course of action! Form up on me!"

Captain Kirge stood by and watched as the remaining 4 men and 2 arrancar slowly broke formation around him. They made their leave, a mixture of hirenkyaku and sonido sounding out before his subordinates began their retreat.

He was genuinely curious to learn if any of them would make it all the way back.

xxXxx

* * *

The Meta ripped their blade free from the Quincy's chest, driving a front kick into the man's chest for good measure. As the defeated Quincy flew backward into a tree, the Meta brought up their sword vertically to block a horizontal swing from one of the two surviving arrancar. As their enemy pressed in with his blade, the Meta lifted up one foot and stomped down on the side of their enemy's kneecap, feeling the joint bend underneath the force of the kick.

_CRACK!_

The arrancar's leg bent sideways, clearly at an unnatural angle, a loud cry of pain tearing out of the arrancar's mouth. The Meta silenced the scream by stabbing their zanpakuto dead center into the top of the head. The reiatsu powered blade pierced through flesh, bone, and finally brain matter, effectively killing the target. Not lingering or contemplating over the kill, the Meta snatched the now deceased arrancar up by the collar and used its corpse to shield itself from the oncoming Quincy arrows.

The Meta had been silently trailing behind the group of Quincy for quite some time.

They had fled from the menos forest to report their findings. One man, their captain presumably, had stayed behind to attempt to stall the Meta. Either the man was willing to die for the wellbeing of his subordinates, or he felt confident enough to kill or capture the hybrid on his own. Either way, the Meta ignored the man entirely, going straight after the fleeing enemies. Sure, one Quincy in the menos forest by himself was an easy target, but the Meta wasn't doing this for the sake of having it easy. And besides that, the Meta would simply go back to kill the man later. With luck, some random hollow pack would have eaten the man by the time they got back.

This group needed more attention at the moment. If they weren't killed off now, then they'd report to their 'majesty' what was happening to all of their patrols and forces who exited Las Noches. So the Meta silently followed after them, concealing their reiatsu all the while, and stalking them at every turn.

And the moment they exited sensing range of their captain, the Meta attacked without warning.

The Quincy were the first to be targeted. As ranged specialists, they could offer support to one another on a level that put even the Meta on edge. With them removed or even weakened in number, the arrancar would be dealt with in short order. So following through on this battle plan, the Meta decapitated the Quincy farthest to the right of the group. As a follow up, they rushed toward the nearest Quincy to them and drove their blade into the man's chest.

The rest was history.

The Meta hurled the dead body at the remaining two Quincy, forcing them to evade the mutilated corpse of their comrade. The Meta moved to attack but suddenly found themselves evading the short sword of the last and final arrancar. The Meta leaped back and dodged away from the blade, tricking back and forth to make for a harder target to hit as this arrancar pressed his attack. The Meta had left their sword imbedded in the skull of the previous arrancar, leaving the hybrid creature barehanded in a fight against multiple, armed combatants.

And the Meta was completely comfortable with this.

As a former PWCD operative, they were quite adept in unarmed combat. In fact, they often preferred to fight barehanded. The Meta had excessive training in how to kill a humanoid or non-humanoid with their bare hands during their life as a commando. They had absolutely no training at all with a sword, knowing only how to swing and block from common sense. So it came as a surprise to the enemy arrancar when the Meta lunged forward to meet his charge while unarmed.

The Meta grabbed the arrancar's wrist as he extended for a stab, redirecting the blade away from their chest. The Meta yanked the arrancar forward, pulling the unfortunate soul into a forearm strike to the side of the head. The Meta followed up by bringing their free hand around to clamp onto the back of the arrancar's head. The Meta forced his head down, while kneeing the man in the ribs twice. The arrancar resisted the hold it had been placed into, trying to throw a punch over his own outstretched arm and at the Meta. The arrancar couldn't adjust himself as his short sword hand was being firmly held at the wrist, and his head being held down by the Meta's other hand. The awkward punch didn't even hurt the Meta due to the little amount of force the arrancar could manage to put behind it while in his position. The Meta responded to the punch by releasing their hold on the arrancar's head, just before bringing a violent elbow strike down on the base of his neck and causing him to rupture a spinal disk. The Meta snapped another knee directly into the arrancar's nose, feeling the bone shatter underneath the force of the blow.

The Meta became acutely aware of the arrow speeding toward their back.

The Meta quickly grabbed and spun the arrancar around so that he was between the Meta and the speeding arrow, placing the evolved hollow into a full nelson to ensure that he wouldn't be able to escape or cut them with his short sword zanpakuto. The arrancar thrashed violently as he attempted to escape, but the Meta responded by putting pressure onto the arrancar's head and locking his kicking legs in place with their own leg to accept the streaking Quincy arrow. The Meta braced themselves behind the vainly struggling arrancar, preparing for the incoming attack.

BOOM!

The arrancar yelled in agony as the exploding arrow tore a large bloody chunk out of his stomach. The Meta wasn't surprised that the arrancar survived. Quincy arrows varied in power, but that one in particular wasn't nearly enough to kill an arrancar with a decent hierro. However, that didn't mean it wouldn't cause a lot of damage. Causing debilitating agony to an enemy was sometimes just as good as a killing blow in the Meta's book.

The Meta relinquished their full nelson and placed both hands on the arrancar's head, one hand cupping the jaw and the other securely at the back of the head. The Meta felt the arrancar jerk his head away instinctively to resist, to which the Meta violently twisted the arrancar's head in the opposite direction. The Meta was satisfied when they heard a loud and all telling '_crack!'_ echo out. The body wordlessly collapsed to the ground, the arrancar's head bent at an unnatural angle.

With the arrancar threat gone, the two remaining Quincy should be fairly easy to remove.

The Meta sonido'd to the body of the other arrancar they had killed, not wasting a moment as they ripped their zanpakuto clean out of the corpse's head. Both of the surviving Quincy suddenly appeared on either side of the Meta, arrows notched to fire. The hybrid was surprised at the sudden appearance, having nearly forgotten to track the locations of their last two enemies during their handling of those two arrancar. As the two arrows came streaking toward the Meta, the hybrid nimbly dunked underneath both projectiles. Then they made a projectile of their own.

The Meta spun on their heel and _hurled_ their zanpakuto at the Quincy on their right side.

The laws of motion state that a projectile will briefly maintain the speed of the object that launched it. If a person were to throw a ball, then that ball would go at the same speed as the hand that threw it until gravity and air resistance finally took their toll. In the Meta's case, the thrown zanpakuto had just been launched by a creature that casually moved at sonic speeds, which meant that the curved sword was now moving as fast as a fired bullet. When placed in conjunction with the fact that the sword was powered with reiatsu, the Meta had essentially hurled a short ranged missile at his opponent.

The Quincy was taken off his feet as the Meta's blade speared through his chest and pinned him to a nearby tree, suspending him off the ground. The man in question yelled in agony, the blade having apparently missed any vital organs. This didn't mean that the Quincy wouldn't die, but simply that he'd bleed out rather than die on impact. The Quincy made a weak attempt to pull the blade out of his chest, or at least pull it out of the tree he'd been pinned to. However, he was losing too much blood and feeling too much pain to manage the task. With one last failed yank, the Quincy passed out, sure to die while he was unconscious.

The moment they saw the blade hit their mark, the Meta came charging at the other Quincy barehanded. The man was now panicked. He had just watched his entire team get ruthlessly butchered by this one creature. He knew that he stood no chance, and that there was no attempt in even trying. So he did the most sensible thing he could think of.

He fled.

The Quincy used hirenkyaku to flee as fast as he could. He poured every bit of reiatsu that he could into his legs and moved as fast as possible. He could care less about any hollows he may cross or any help that may be nearby for him to signal for. He was focused on his own survival, and would allow nothing to slow him down. However, there was one thing he didn't account for.

The Meta was faster.

The Quincy cried out as a pair of boots slammed into his back, driving him into the dirt. They skidded across the desert dirt for a few feet before coming to a stop. The Meta clamped their hands on the back of the Quincy's head and his jaw. The Meta briefly acknowledged that the man below him was screaming in terror before he tightened his grip firmly. With practiced ease, the Meta jerked the Quincy's head to the side.

_Crack!_

And the Quincy was no more.

xxXxx

* * *

The hunting captain, Kirge Opie, was patiently waiting, a small smile on his face.

He was out of sensing range of his subordinates, which meant they had managed to get quite far away from here without incident. However, that didn't mean that they had escaped, but simply that they made it out of sensing range. The man was fully expecting for not a single man to make it all the way back to Las Noches. This creature hiding in the forest brush was clearly a hunter, and a highly intelligent one at that. The hunting captain knew that it was more likely than not that the creature would stalk his own retreating men rather than go for just him.

So to confirm his suspicion, he placed one hand on the side of his ear, radioing in his subordinates. If they answered, then he'd know that the creature was still waiting in the forest to attack him. If not, then he'd prepare himself for when the monster came to try and finish him off, which was something he was quite eager for.

"Kiro, come in. Have you made it to HQ?"

"_...*cough* ….*cough*_"

"Kiro?"

"_...Commander Kirge, it *cough*...*cough* ambushed us. I'm the only one left. I guess it thought I was dead and chased after Madoka when he ran._"

Kiro was pinned against the tree by the Meta's sword, having shortly regained consciousness. He was whispering quietly, hoping that the monster who had done this to him wasn't nearby, or at the very least wouldn't hear him. The hunting captain made a soft 'humph' on his end, as if a theory he was working on had been confirmed.

"_Sir...It must've avoided you because its scared! *cough* *cough* *cough*__! Kill it! __Find it and- GAAH!_ *CRACK*"

"Kiro? Are you still there?" The hunting commander had killed enough people to know the sound of a bone being crushed, but he figured he may as well ask, just in case.

"_Hissssss...!_" An inhuman noise was made into the device, which couldn't possibly belong to his subordinate. The fact that this odd creature was now using Kiro's radio had made it obvious what had happened to the man.

"Ah! You must be the hollow that's been killing all of my men!" Kirge said with an upbeat voice, sounding as if he was talking to a good friend rather than a murderous enemy.

Hearing nothing but a slight inhuman growl on the other line, he pressed on with the 'conversation' he was having.

"You are strong! Of that, there is no doubt! You are skilled! You are ruthless to a degree that I didn't think to be possible! We have great use for one such as you!" The hunting captain knew from what he saw that he wouldn't be able to bring the creature in by forcing it, which meant he'd have to either make it join willingly or kill it.

The creature made no sound, which indicated that it understood what he was saying.

"Join our majesty's service! He would not only forgive you for your transgressions, but accept you among his ranks as one of-"

_*CRUNCH!* _

Silence.

The hunting captain frowned, hearing the line go dead on the other end. Apparently the creature had opted to simply crush the earpiece in its hand rather than listen any further. The hunting captain sighed, casting aside his polearm and slowly drawing a katana from his hip.

Killing it is then.

xxXxx


	6. Hostile intentions

**Hostile intentions**

Humans are all survivors, adapters, and fighters.

These are three traits that are glaringly apparent in all humans of all parts of the world. From the hottest deserts in Africa to the coldest reaches of Antarctica, the human population has always found a way to thrive in the harshest of environments. Even more so, they have found ways to not only survive, but war against each other under such a wide variety of conditions. It is because all humans, regardless of ethnicity or gender, have these three traits that this is possible.

All humans warrant being labeled survivors because there is no environment known to man that is simply uninhabitable to the human race. Quite literally, there is a human civilization within every climate and geographic location that can logically exist. The high mountains that would normally be too dangerous for any large population to live on were inhabited by the descendants of the Inca tribe. The North and South Pole both frequently remain in the negative temperatures, yet were home to numerous groups, most notably the Eskimos. The examples are endless.

All humans warrant being labeled as fighters, as there isn't a single group of humans that is entirely peaceful. There are certainly groups that advocate peace and tolerance, but even they have some sort of solution for self-defense purposes. Just like every human society has adapted to their environment, one of the main things they did as a follow up was build a military or armed force of some sort. Any human civilization without a dedicated military either didn't have the numbers to produce one yet, turned their entire population into a militia when it was appropriate, or in some cases, did both.

All humans warrant being labeled as adapters, as they have adapted to solve every problem they were confronted with. When they fought predatory animals that couldn't be beaten in a direct fight, they developed weapons to kill those predators. When they found a geographic or nature related obstacle, they developed a means to get around it. Most of all, when they encountered each other in conflict, they adapted to one another's strengths and weaknesses.

The individual human is considered very insignificant in the grand scheme of things, even by other humans. This isn't to say because the individual is worthless, but because the human populace has always made its greatest successes when in groups or during cooperation with one another. Most individuals simply have no ability to stand out, because there are billions of others just like them out to leave their mark on the world.

However, this certainly isn't to say that the individual human is incompetent; simply that they all await the moment to prove themselves.

xxXxx

* * *

In the city of Nagoya, a pair of U.S. APCs came driving down the street.

Nagoya was a proud Japanese city. It wasn't a full-fledged metropolis, nor was it a very green suburban area. It was just in the middle. It was quite enough for many people to find peace and tranquility. However, it was bustling enough for one to get a feel of the city life, with sky scrapers, bright lights, and various businesses being plenty apparent. To anyone visiting, the city of Nagoya would've been a picture perfect place for one to live.

And now, it was nightmarish parody of that vision.

It had been several months since the Youkai invasion. Since then, corpsmen had gone about the gruesome job of identifying and disposing of bodies. Since so many people had been killed, many had opted for simply moving the bodies of fallen humans into neat lines, erecting memorials, and burning the bodies as a sign that they were now at peace. It was rather underwhelming, but the alternative was the less respectful practice of simply torching any bodies they came across. Since the invasion had been several months ago, most of the bodies still around were well into the process of decaying by now.

The bodies of any Youkai found were either dumped into trenches, thrown into the seas, or stacked high on mortars of wood, and set on fire in a mass cremation. All bodies of plant monsters were burned on sight. Their bodies were simply too numerous for anyone to bother with the task of trying to pile them all up. The intent was to be as disrespectful to the Youkai dead as they possibly could be. It was a silent declaration of superiority to the world, seeing as the media was covering the events as it happened. It was only petty revenge, but if it helped blow off steam, then no one had any real intentions of stopping those people from doing it.

As the two APCs rolled through the streets of the sad husk of the city, they radiated an aura of power.

The combined military force of Japan and the U.S. had all but burnt out the last remnants of any Youkai resistance. Any pockets of Youkai extremists still remaining were either hiding from the constant aerial scans that coasted the country, or had completely fled altogether and were trying to find a place to hide in the monster world. The entire country of Japan was essentially recaptured in months through a massive shock and awe campaign. Even so, the coalition force of China and the U.S. would continue to occupy the country for a long time to come.

But as of now, those APCs were moving with a clear purpose and objective. Within those two APCs were a force of 24 U.S. marines and one other... guest.

Within the front APC, the atmosphere was quite awkward.

6 men sat on either side of the armored vehicle in silence. No one was willing to talk or joke around as was typical with marines. Instead, everyone was rather nervous. They were nervous that they were on a mission that would more than likely see them fighting some kind of monsters. They were nervous that they'd be the only group on the mission, with no reinforcements within miles to come to their aid.

Most of all, they were nervous to be sharing their transportation with _him_.

Sitting at the far end of the transport, directly next to the back door was massive man in all black armor. He had a kukri knife sheath strapped to his shoulder, with the actual knife being held loosely in his right hand. There was a Glock 19 machine pistol strapped to his hip, with a pair of drum magazines attached to his belt for said weapon. His helmet was vaguely similar to an astronaut helmet, but designed to allow a full range of movement and not be irritatingly heavy. The helmet itself wasn't what disturbed the soldiers, but rather what was on the visor of it.

A grinning skull-like face had been carved into the plexiglass pane of the visor, which was the only thing that implied any emotion on the soldier himself.

And generally, when a particularly evil looking skull face was a person's only insight into you, then their insight was likely to not be positive. Coupled with the fact that the man was a colossally sized giant, the marines were outright terrified of being in his presence.

The augment in question was Jarvis, one of the more discontenting of augments to be around. He was a prisoner who was charged and convicted of executing prisoners during work as a mercenary. After serving 5 years of a life sentence, he was offered a way out through joining the French Foreign Legion. He proceeded to join and participate in a 15 year long career before he was finally noticed by the PWCD. Once he received his augmentations, and was presented with an enemy that held absolutely no moral or legal repercussions for killing, he set about his new walk of life with abandon. He was a tested and diagnosed sociopath before entering the PWCD, and after being given such free reign to kill, he reached a mental state that made even his fellow augments wary.

The marines of course, didn't know any of this. The simple feeling he generated around him put the marines on edge enough to keep their distance. Had they known any of his background information and some of his more distasteful 'tendencies' for fighting, then they may have refused to accept the mission altogether, much less agree to enter into a compact space with him. Ignorance was bliss, it seemed.

Their mission wasn't simply another search for a suspected Youkai extremist hideout, but something far more important. Something serious enough to warrant oversight by a veteran PWCD augment.

The marines had been briefed well before the mission began of all the things they should know. They had been informed that the man that would be accompanying them was the completed result of a super soldier program. This wasn't a lie. They had been informed that he was part of a foreign operations division with valuable experience in what they were dealing with. This also wasn't a lie, as the PWCD was technically a foreign power to any other military they interacted with. They had been informed that they were en route to a valuable information cache that potentially belonged to non-humans. This cache could yield valuable information on the non-human threat.

This was where the truth of the matter began to become more and more 'conceptual'.

This information cache technically _did_ belong to non-humans, as practitioners of magic and witchcraft were considered as non-human for all intents and purposes. The wording implied this cache belonged to the Youkai species, but it was clearly not so.

The PWCD had come upon a cache of books, papers, and odd materials once before. During the fighting in Japan, a single out of the way estate was being attacked by numerous plant monsters. Somehow, something inside the estate was holding the creatures off. The PWCD was too wide spread to dedicate serous attention to the occurrence, but regardless, diverted one of the nearby special operations squads to investigate the estate.

The bodies of numerous charred plant creatures littered the area. They were burnt in a way that implied the flames killed their targets without any apparent gasoline, hairspray, or such substance to make the flames stick being found. This was mostly disregarded at first. As the PWCD augments investigated deeper, they curiously found a door with numerous dead plants bunched up in front of a staircase, apparently having knocked the door that was supposed to be there off its hinges.

It was here that they discovered a room full of artifacts, books, and papers that were all suspicious in nature. The PWCD spec-ops reported their findings, and secured the area for further study while the rest of the PWCD's augments were out fighting. The PWCD suspected the area to be home to a witch coven or something similar, but that was quickly disproved. Witches were the very beings controlling the plant monsters, and the bodies of the plants suggested a struggle of some sort.

In addition, numerous books made mention of a 'Magus Association'. It made even more frequent references of 'Thaumaturgy', which in the context it was frequently used implied it as a name for magic. The PWCD never encountered or heard of anything about a Magus Association, despite the fact that they frequently hunted witches and raided their homes for relevant information. The information yielded from this first cache was large, but vastly incomplete. Regardless, the PWCD secured the area and sent in experts to study the place, making sure that they had a squad of augments present near the area at all times.

The PWCD had a vested interest in finding more caches, and it just so happened that the U.S. armed forces had found one while fighting the Youkai.

The U.S. military had made nothing of it the first time around, as they were far more concerned with the visible Youkai threat at the time. With constant fighting going on at the time, a report of an area filled with a variety of questionable information and artifacts was largely ignored as a footnote to investigate once the fighting had settled down.

The PWCD was quick to seize their window of opportunity by making the event a joint operation. The U.S. had agreed to send 2 squads of marines to secure the area. The PWCD agreed to send one man. On paper, it sounded rather pathetic, but that 'one man' would scare everyone he met far more than 24 marines would.

This latest information cache had been located at Nagoya's largest and most well-known library. Rather than being found in a secret room, there was a hidden staircase that led to an honest to God dungeon. The only reason the spot had been located at all was because a group of soldiers had chanced upon the doorway to the dungeon during the fighting with the Youkai extremists. Just like the first time, a trail of slain plant monsters had made a trail to the area, eventually leading to a bloodstain that presumably belonged to the owner of the dungeon.

The marines' job was simple.

They were to park right outside the library and leave a team of 18 men to secure the library alongside the APCs. It was easily possible that something may come sniffing by, and if that happened, the military soldiers intended to be prepared. The APCs were to play the temporary role of machine gun nests and cover for the 18 men, also serving as a means of escape should a major attack come. Meanwhile, a team of 6, accompanied by the augment, would go down into the dungeon to bring back as much as they could. If they were unable to move everything into the APCs for whatever reason, then they were to destroy the books and documents they couldn't bring so as to prevent any potential enemies from learning anything about what they were doing. It seemed a better idea to simply secure the entire area with a task force and study everything exactly where it was, but that would rouse too much attention. The media would certainly notice any massive movement of troops in Japan, especially after the fighting had settled so much. The PWCD preferred to keep things quiet and the U.S. government didn't wish to cause anymore civil unrest at the moment.

Of course, the idea that any Youkai may show up was unlikely. The last recorded engagement between any human armed forces and Youkai extremists was well over 2 weeks ago. The monsters had realized that they had lost the war, and were in full retreat from Japan. Of course, no conflict was ever won in human history by assuming the enemy was harmless. It was better to bring force and not use it, than need force and not have it. The pair of APCs came to a stop in front of the library, the building looking more like a morgue with all the explosive residue and bullet holes adorning the building.

The very first to step out of either of the vehicles was none other than Jarvis, the unofficial PWCD spook of this mission.

He immediately began taking long strides toward the library double doors, paying no heed as the marines behind him quickly filed out with their rifles ready and loaded. Jarvis calmly removed his Glock 19 machine pistol from his hip, loading a lopsidedly large drum magazine into the seemingly tiny machine pistol and flipping the weapon to fully automatic fire. The augment made a once-over of his inventory; 2 fragmentation grenades, a Glock 19 with 2 drum magazines, his trademark kukri knife, and a secondary 8 inch combat knife safely stored away in his right boot. As far as armed operations went, this was an extremely light load out. Even reconnaissance teams who didn't expect to get into combat were armed more heavily than Jarvis currently was. This was simply because Jarvis went about his job in one of two ways; overwhelming firepower or close and personal action. Since this mission was liable to be entirely close-quarters based, if any fighting happened at all, he decided to simply go with a reliable gun that offered a high rate of fire. The penetration power of the gun was unaltered, so if anything more resilient than a lizardman showed its face, a Glock 19 was more likely to kill it by grinding its face away under a hail of bullets rather than actually penetrating through.

The augment paused as he heard orders being shouted out. The overall commander of the two teams was at work equally dividing up his men to get the full effect of their individual abilities and weapons. All the support gunners and riflemen of both squads remained where they were, while the Sergeant himself took the one demo man present, as well as 4 other riflemen with him to go down into this so called 'cache of vital information'. The remaining 18 men got to work entrenching their position, squatting in positions that would allow them to scour the outer area without leaving the cover their APCs, abandoned cars, and the nearby ruins of the city offered.

6 men walked up to the augment, each of them feeling slightly intimidated by the smirking skull that leered down at them.

"So big guy, would you like to take point? Or would you rather cover the rear?" The Sergeant of the assembled 2 dozen marines made a cool front, being sure to demonstrate that he was unafraid of the augment's imposing size, or the fact that he was armed with a variety of lethal weapons.

Jarvis was impressed with the man's steel. "I'll take point. I'm both the best protected, and most well suited to close range." The super human stated, before turning away from the man. He distinctly left out the 'sir', as he wasn't underneath the man's command. The PWCD was working alongside the U.S. military, but not to the point of temporarily merging their chains of command.

Brushing off the offhand disrespect, the marine sergeant walked after the augments. "Private Taylor, you've got the rear. Anything comes in behind us that isn't human, pump it full of lead." The sergeant ordered the squad demo man, taking advantage of the fact that he was armed with a semi-automatic shotgun and LAW missile launcher.

The 7 soldiers entered the building on alert, weapons raised and ready.

xxXxx

* * *

Crouching on a roof that oversaw the library were 6 figures.

In all black robes, adorned with all sorts of magical calligraphy, were none other than 6 members of the Magus Association. Not only were they members, but full-on enforcers. They were combat-based Magi, who focused all their talents on the concept of killing and destroying. This was made evident by the fact that 3 of the 6 members were armed with some sort of weapon. The weapons ranged from being melee-like in nature, like a sword or hammer, to a strange device that seemed to be a silver outlining of a gun laced with magical runes.

And as of now, they were all extremely edgy.

The Magus Association was made aware of the fact that some sort of upstart organization was making their way around the world. They didn't seem to be involved with magic in any way whatsoever, instead opting to use an assortment of technological weapons. They had been informed that this organization's equivalent of enforcers, or the Church's executioners, was some form of super soldiers clad in massive technological armor. What's more, this organization only seemed to have intentions of hunting Youkai, Dead Apostles, and possibly the spiritual creatures that the Magi had noticed earlier.

Had the Magi only seen U.S. military troops investigating the library, they would've written them off as scouring the area for more monsters. The presence of that augment had changed everything however. With visual proof that the PWCD was directly involved with conventional military forces, that meant that anything they learned was in turn learned by the governments of numerous countries as well. Not even the Magus Association, with all their connections into the government, could hope to silence an information leak that large. The fact that they hadn't learned anything about this until now was proof enough that the human populace in general probably knew much more than the Magus Association liked to believe.

Undoubtedly, they were here to study the abandoned workshop. The fact that they knew exactly where it was had greatly implied that they knew a fair bit on Magi already.

These people had to be eliminated at once. To fail to do so would be to allow the magical world to be exposed, if it hadn't been already. The issue arose in the fact that unlike cover-up killings or the hunting of rogue magi, they were going up against armed human soldiers that were somewhat prepared for an attack. They wouldn't be handling a few families that may or may not know something about the magical world or dealing with amateurish magi with very few noteworthy connections, but be killing the armed soldiers of a world superpower, which was something that would be nearly impossible to cover up. Beyond that, a PWCD super soldier was with them, who only further complicated matters.

No matter how they went about this situation, the continued secrecy of magic would be in jeopardy. The fact of the matter was simply that if they killed all the gathered soldiers here and burned the workshop down, there would be a better chance to cover everything up than simply letting the world powers come and study a magi workshop.

So with no alternative, they began planning their method of attack.

xxXxx

* * *

Private Brockman was just plain old city boy in over his head.

Before joining the army, he was a below average student. He was held back one year in grade school, which always made him feel somewhat inferior to his peers during school. He only barely managed to get out of high school, graduating at the age of 18. He didn't have any real options as far as college was concerned. There was no money to spend going to college, and he failed to receive any type of scholarship. So when he graduated, he didn't know what to do with his life.

However, his father had been a highly ranked member of the U.S. Navy. Given the militaristic history of his dad, he felt somewhat inclined to follow in his footsteps. So with that, he enlisted in the U.S. marines. It was one of the few positions in the armed forces that didn't require anything above a high school level education to enlist in. He didn't expect to go fight in any wars, or become some sort of Call of Duty character. To him, this was just a job through which he could make something of himself.

And then the invasion of Japan happened.

His company had been one of the lucky ones. They weren't ordered to go into the city of nightmares that was Nagoya a few months ago. His platoon had been tasked with securing the forward bases, while the rest of the company took some armored support to go smoke out a few monsters hiding in the subways. From what he had heard, the rest of the company had taken gas masks and were leaking white phosphorus gas into the subways through the ventilation systems. That was considered a war crime by even the most brutal armies in the world, yet his very own company had specific orders from the Brigadier himself to do so. It did wonders to showcase just how messed up of a situation he was in. He had yet to actually see a monster face to face, and he prayed that by the end of this campaign, it'd remain that way.

It seemed that it wasn't to be however, when a portion of his platoon had been sent to go find some 'cache of information' alongside some armored psychopath with a skull carving for a face.

Now he found himself sitting behind a pair of APCs alongside 17 other men and women who he knew each of by name, waiting for the aforementioned super human to come back with the rest of his squad. It was a tense feeling, as no one in his platoon had actually gone this deep into Nagoya before. The sight of ruined buildings, dozens of pockmarks, and dried up smears of what may or may not be blood, everyone was definitely nervous. Many of the soldiers who returned from the initial fighting of Japan were mentally scarred by the sights they beheld or even committed suicide. If this place was as troubling as it was, months after the worst of the fighting, than he could only imagine what those poor souls must've seen and done.

Pvt. Brockman stood up from his position behind the forward APC, making his way to the APC parked behind his. He was going to go over to the sergeant of the second squad and try to strike up a conversation. He planned on talking to the man about his opinion of the so called 'foreign super soldier'.

And then something caught his eye on the roof of the building across the street. It was a glint of metal.

In basic training, the marines were taught to be on the lookout for shooters most of all. The best way to identify a sniper was by the glint their weapons would cause. It wasn't ultra-effective, but something that marines were taught to pay some attention to when they noticed.

But that glint wasn't from a rifle of any sort. The object didn't seem to have a scope, an iron sight, or even a barrel. It was then that he noticed that the strange rifle-like object was actually being wielded by a person. And the weapon was aimed directly at him!

"SNIPER!" Pvt. Brockman shouted in alert, his 'paintball' firefight training coming to play.

He dove against the hull of the APC, just as a weird sound echoed out. It didn't sound like a gunshot, but more like some sort of over the top ray gun you'd hear in a science fiction movie.

**BOOOOM!**

The ground that the private had previously occupied exploded with some sort of weird swirling red energy. The explosion couldn't possibly have been any sort of conventional explosion, as the ground that remained was charred in a way that nothing but an incendiary weapon would cause. Shouts of alarm went up as the marines realized they had just been fired on.

The two men mounting the APC's machine gun turrets swiveled their weapons to the roof of the building across the street, immediately realizing where the attack had come from.

**BOOOOM!**

A second shot rang out, this time aiming at the machine gunner on the rearmost APC. The man never got a chance to scream, as the moment he was hit his body was immediately engulfed in the same red energy as before. The man's gun warped and melted, the man's body armor and clothing was sheared away, and the man's body consumed in searing red heat. All that remained of the man's upper body was a charred petrified husk.

"We've been engaged!" The sergeant of the second squad shouted, shouldering his rifle and peeking up over the APC to try and spot the shooter.

Not wasting a moment, the machine gunner of the first APC aimed his gun at the location of the attack, sighting a man in black clothing that was holding a strange rifle-like weapon. Without hesitation, he jammed down the triggers on the mounted machine gun, sending a hail of .50 caliber rounds at the transgressor.

The shooter in question rolled backward, using his elevation as an advantage. Heavy machine gun rounds tore chunks out of the roof, the harsh barking of the gun resonating for miles around. Several more marines popped out from behind both the APCs, opening fire in bursts with M16s, M14s, and a few SAW light machine guns.

Pvt. Brockman sat against the APC in a state of shock.

Another attacker popped over the top of a building right next to the one they were previously shooting at. This person was also wearing black, wielding no weapon of any sort. Instead, she pointed one of her hands down at the group of marines, her hands building energy. She began unleashing a barrage of curses at the armed soldiers.

Balls of energy impacted on the side of APCs or overshot the vehicle entirely and hit the ground behind the armored vehicles. The machine gunner dunked inside the APC to avoid getting hit by the fired curses. The marines pressed themselves against the side of the vehicles, adjusting their shots to fire on the second attacker as well.

Pvt. Brockman simply sat still in shock.

The sound and sight of explosives impacting all around, the rattling and barking of gunfire, the shout of orders and positions being exchanged, all pointed to one conclusion. He was actually in a firefight. What the hell was going on? There wasn't supposed to be much of any resistance in all of Japan at this point. Nagoya was probably the hottest zone in all of Japan and there hadn't been any real fighting for the past two weeks. Why was this happening now of all times?

He felt a rough hand grip him by his shoulder and tug him up to his feet. Looking to his left, he saw Eddie, one of his longtime squad mates and friends glaring at him with a serious look in his eye.

"Get to your feet Brockman! We need all the guns we can get!" He simply looked at him, still overwhelmed by the surreality of it all.

Eddie released his shoulder, and instead gripped his rifle before pressing it into his chest. The entire time, he looked at Brockman with a dead serious look. That moment of sorting out feelings done, he released his peer and popped over the APC again with his M14 rifle in hand. He sighted down a target on the roof, the one with the gun that shot some kind of heat.

The man fired two prolonged bursts of fire at the man the moment he leaned over for another shot.

The first few shots pinged off the man's black clothing. Apparently these attackers had some sort of bulletproof material laced into their clothing. The bullets couldn't have missed, as the man did in fact flinch at the impacts. However, the sparking ricochets showed that no penetration had been made. The few shots that didn't impact on the man's armored clothing had missed entirely.

All but one.

A single shot managed to get through without hitting the clothing of the attacker. The round grazed the man's temple, causing a small amount of blood to visually squirt out from his head. The man yelled in both surprise and pain, lurching back behind cover. Had the round been anything of heavier yield, the bullet would've gone straight through and been a clean head shot. Even if it wasn't a kill, the shooter would be a lot more hesitant to take a shot now.

"Hah! Tagged one of the bastards!" Eddie boasted, ducking behind cover as more curses slammed into the APC, causing the armored vehicle to rock lightly.

Pvt. Brockman felt elated by the sight of one their enemies going down. It seemed to be a kill from his point of view, but he couldn't quite tell for sure. However, he had just seen visible proof that men like him had a great chance at winning this fight and making it home. That was all his heart needed.

Bringing his M16 to bear, flipping the rifle from one shot to fully automatic, he began suppressing the other attacker who had been busy hurling curse after curse upon his squad mates. The woman in question dunked behind the building, seeing the multitude of rounds chipping away at the edge of the roof before her.

This felt too easy! It was a fight of 17 vs 2. Even if the attackers had the high ground, the marines had superior firepower on their side. At this rate, they could continue suppressing with the machine guns while a small team broke off to go into the building after the shooters. Hell, at this distance, they may be able to throw a grenade up on the roofs. The absolute best case scenario was that two of the men here made a lucky shot just like Eddie did and downed both of the attackers. With 17 guns firing at two targets, someone was eventually going to hit something.

There was no warning whatsoever.

The men who were pressed against the second APC were fine for one moment. They were returning fire on the pair of attackers like true veterans, despite having never seen live combat before. They were holding their own with ease and then some. Then out of nowhere, a gout of fire washed over the men, taking them completely by surprise. The men screamed as searing heat washed over them.

Their saving grace was that the flames weren't napalm or gas fueled. It was just normal fire being manipulated.

That meant that the flames wouldn't stick all that well on their own, and the temperature itself was more likely to kill than the actual flames. However, that still didn't change the fact that an entire squad was being bathed in fire. The men broke cover and screamed in pain. They patted out the fires as they caught on their uniforms, rolled on the ground to avoid being fully engulfed, or covered their face in agony as their face caught a bit of the flames.

Striding from around the corner of the library was a third man, who had blond hair and that same black uniform as before. His hand was alight with fire, but that didn't seem to trouble him. His palm opened up, and another gout of flame washed over the disoriented marines. By now, the other two attackers had realized they weren't the center of attention anymore. They would've begun opening a new barrage upon the men left vulnerable from the second APC if not for being wary of retaliatory gunfire from the still uninjured soldiers.

In the open, disoriented from the surprise fire attack, those marines didn't stand a chance.

The machine gunner from the first APC covered his men's backs. The heavy machine gun swept back and forth over the roofs of both buildings. The .50 bullets were heavily inaccurate from the sporadic shots, but the fact that they were coming was enough to make the two shooters on the roof think better of popping their heads up.

Brockman realized that the man who was wielding fire would massacre them if no one stopped him. Despite the fact that his flames weren't sticking all that well, they still caused debilitating agony to whoever was caught up in them. No one in the second squad would be able to return fire and save themselves from being immolated if no one moved to help them.

Brockman stood up and broke cover, ignoring the warnings of the rest of his squad mates. He jogged around the men of the second squad, rounding off on the flame user with his rifle ready. The blond haired man in black turned to face him, his hands erupting in flames for another gout of fire. Pvt. Brockman acted out of pure survival instinct. He saw his enemy prepared to kill him, and brought his gun up in response.

_BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!_

Pvt. Brockman was completely caught off guard when the flame user's head _disintegrated_ under a hail of bullets. The bullets came fast and in rapid repetition. He had been in basic training for a while, and never once had he seen a gun with such a high rate of fire, much less its use on a live target. It was like watching four guns shooting a single target at once.

The flame user's clothing sparked violently as most of the bullets hit him in his chest or arms, ricocheting off. However, a good portion of the barrage found his unarmored face and tore it apart. The man was sent sprawling back under the onslaught, before finally falling over. His face was an unrecognizable mess of gore. Pvt. Brockman immediately averted his eyes, lest he lose his lunch.

Jarvis strode out of the library, his Glock 19 machine pistol still pointing at the downed target, followed closely by the demo man from his group. The gun had a rate of fire that put most submachine guns to shame, which was why he brought it with him. There was never a moment he regretted bringing this pistol when he saw its effects on a live target.

The 6 men he had brought with him hastily ran to the aid of the men still disoriented and injured by the barrage of flame, dragging them all back into cover, picking up their slack with their own weapons.

Jarvis smiled when he saw the guy with the LAW missile launcher ready and load the weapon with a look of righteous fury on his face. Watching the man carefully aim the missile at the woman shooting balls of energy, he repressed a laugh when he saw the woman's face as an anti-tank missile streaked toward the roof she was on.

When he saw the girl go flying off the roof, her charred body going in one direction and her right arm going in the other, he knew these men had everything covered.

**BOOOOM!**

Jarvis spun around as he heard an explosion go off inside the library, or more accurately, underneath it.

Looking and seeing that the men who had been flamed were mostly still in fighting condition, he ran back inside the building. He wanted to confirm what he desperately hoped wasn't true. He shoulder charged through the library double doors, unhinging them easily with his weight as he pressed on. He sprinted past the rows of books and computers. He bulldozed through any coat racks and such in his way in order to get to the secret door inside the building.

There was absolutely no time to waste. If what he thought was true, then those 3 (now 1) attackers outside had been a distraction. Their real objective had been to destroy all the information in the secret library room. If they had succeeded, then the entire point of them coming here would be for nothing.

The augment flew down the staircase, covering 4 or 5 stairs per step he took. At the end of the stairs would be the door that led into the room of valuable books, parchments, and artifacts.

The door opened to show a trio of people in black walking out, leaving the room behind them in cinders. Their clothes were covered in odd runes and such, their faces were open to reveal the faces of 3 men. All of them felt their eyes bulge at the sight before them.

Charging down the stairs at breakneck speeds was an angry 7ft tall augment in heavy armor, a leering skull carved into his faceplate, a pistol with a very large clip in one hand, a kukri knife in the other hand. Most of all, he was radiating with violent intentions. Lesser men would panic and flee before such a sight.

Fortunately, the enforcers of the Magus Association weren't lesser men.

Two of the men were armed with melee weapons, a sword and a hammer. The third man had nothing but his bare hands. They steeled themselves for one of the most brutal encounters they'd ever face. This monster of a man before them would surely come swinging like a berserker. He didn't pause to speak or anything. He simply sighted them and increased his speed.

It wasn't until the giant snapped up his gun at them that they realized he actually intended to use it on them.

The Glock 19 was a gun famous for the volume of shots it could put out. With a normal clip, it would burn out all its shots in seconds. With a drum magazine, the simple machine pistol turned into a one-handed submachine gun. The only downside to the weapon was that it could easily jam or misfire if not maintained correctly, and that it was highly inaccurate if you were any farther than 50 meters.

In a cramped stairway like this, Jarvis could close his eyes and would still be able to reliably hit all three of them.

_BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!_

Two of the trio of magi reflexively covered their faces with their sleeves. Reinforcement was a basic ability that anyone could accomplish. Reinforcing clothing was almost second nature to any enforcer. However, one of the three knew self-reinforcement, which was quite a bit more dangerous to learn. His allies shielded themselves defensively as bullets rained over the three of them. The rounds pinged off the other two's reinforced clothes and weapons harmlessly, though if a single shot even ricocheted into their faces, then they'd die. The one who had reinforced his entire body ignored the bullets entirely, feeling the rounds ping off his face and cheeks as well as clothing.

The man whose entire body was reinforced ran forward up the stairs to meet the augment's charge. Body reinforcement increased one's speed and strength, not just their toughness. It was because of this knowledge that this particular enforcer figured he could handle the augment in close quarters. Coupled with the enforcer's skill in kickboxing, he figured he'd knock this brute silly before killing him.

Jarvis dropped his shoulder and went low, pushing off the stairs completely and flying through the air. The Magus halted and tried to brace himself for impact. Of course, when a man who weighs 700+ pounds makes a flying shoulder charge at you, any option is better than standing still to accept the charge.

The augment collided with the reinforced Magus with a thunderous clap, like a hammer meeting an anvil.

The Magus went flying back at the impact, smashing straight into his two allies. They barely managed to settle into their landing before the augment himself landed smack on top of the three, driving the air out of the two men who weren't reinforced.

Jarvis immediately got to a knee on top of the three of them and pointed his Glock 19 down at the three men.

Their clothing may have been bulletproof, but their faces sure weren't. The pyromaniac he had killed earlier had sure proven that. Despite this, one of the three men had taken quite a few bullets to the face and not had a scratch to show for it. So he figured testing that theory at point-blank range would be a better option.

_BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!_

Jarvis fired the machine pistol into the three downed magi less than a foot away. At this proximity, a few bullets were sure to ricochet back into the shooter, but that was the good thing about having full-body armor. The Magi beneath him weren't so lucky.

2 of the 3 died immediately.

Their faces had no protection as dozens of rounds pelted them. Their heads seemingly disintegrated under the onslaught of bullets. The man who had taken Jarvis' charge however only grimaced in pain as the bullets slammed into his face again and again, but were not able to penetrate through his skin. Regardless of the penetration, that didn't change the fact that pieces of metal moving at subsonic speeds were painfully smacking into his face. Undoubtedly, he'd have bruises or fractured bones to show for those shots. For Jarvis however, that wasn't good enough if it didn't kill or maim the target.

So Jarvis tried his second weapon.

He drove his kukri knife down into the base of the man's throat, aiming for the soft spot where there were no bones or muscles to prevent the blade from puncturing. He put as much strength as he could into the attack, knowing that even the force of the attack alone would probably crush the man's throat. The penetration would just be the coup de grace.

So Jarvis was understandably baffled when not only did the knife scrap off the side rather then slice through, but aside from a surprise coughing fit, the man's throat wasn't crushed either.

The Magi threw a punch to the side of Jarvis' helmet, actually snapping the augment's head back and making him sprawl backward in surprise. The Magi got back up in a pace that was much quicker than a normal human could do without augmentations. Jarvis was certain that he was dealing with some sort of Youkai he had never encountered before.

The Magi threw a low kick to the side of Jarvis' head, presumably intending to put the augment down with a concussion. Jarvis, still grounded, was forced to block with both his forearms. The blow was actually hard enough for him to believe that he had been kicked by another augment. He had forearm plates on his armor, yet that kick still hurt! Jarvis retaliated by launching a kick into the side of the magi's knee that he was using to balance. The Magus felt one of his legs get kicked out from under him and was dropped to one knee. Jarvis kicked again, this time aiming for the nose. The kick struck the side of his head instead, as the Magus had flinched away upon seeing the foot coming.

Jarvis quickly hoped to his feet and was delighted to see that his enemy was still recovering from the kick to the head he had received. Not giving a moment of reprieve, the augment slid to the side of the downed magus and put him in a half-nelson, and then put his free hand over the other hand. This was called the 'power half', which was made with the intent to grind your opponent's face into the ground. With one arm trapped in a half nelson and the other too busy trying to support his body to be of use, the Magus was essentially at the mercy of Jarvis, who wasn't particularly known for being merciful to enemies.

The augment smashed and pressed the Magus' face hard into the dirt, tiring out one of the magus' arms in the process. Seeing as the point-blank bullets had left a mess of welts and bruises on the magi's face, the experience was extremely painful for him. The man struggled and strained to get up, but Jarvis didn't stop there either. He maintained the half-nelson on the magus with one arm to keep him from escaping. The augment then raised his free hand and drove his elbow into the back of the man's neck twice, the armored elbow pad of Jarvis' armor making the impact that much more painful.

The magus finally got his wits about him and remembered some of his training for these types of situations. With his free arm, he reached up peeled of the hand that was holding his head down. With his head free and his arms useable once more, the magi drove a hard elbow into Jarvis' stomach once, causing the super human to briefly bend over.

The Magus reached up and grabbed the augment by the head with both hands, and setting a base for himself. Then he tossed the massive man over his shoulder, making Jarvis land flat on his back right in front of the Magus. Jarvis snapped both arms up and wrapped them both around the magus' neck before gator rolling to the side and rolling the magi with him. Now Jarvis was on his stomach, chocking the Magus below him who had been rolled onto his back.

"-gack!" The Magus choked, feeling his air circulation get cut off.

Jarvis got up on the balls of his feet and tightened his hold, while also pressing his head into the magi's chest. Getting on the balls of his feet put more of his weight on the magus below him. In this hold, the magi below him couldn't hit him as he was pressed too close for any form of attack, couldn't get any leverage to free himself, and most of all, couldn't avoid the fate of being choked out.

The magi's struggles grew increasingly weaker as he ran out of oxygen. To hurry up the process, Jarvis head butted the Magi in his stomach over and over, driving a little more air out with each impact. The Magi was getting desperate, trying to find Jarvis' neck to choke him or collapse his throat. However, full body armor eliminated both of these possibilities. With one last burst of energy, the magi kicked, screamed, and jerked around, but these actions only hastened his condition.

The man eventually went limp beneath the augment after 2 or 3 minutes of struggling. To insure that he wasn't playing possum, Jarvis released one arm from his choke hold and punched the magi hard in the gut. When he got no response from below him, he finally stood up.

The augment could only sigh as he looked around.

The information was all ruined. Everything was in cinders and ashes. They'd be lucky if they could scavenge a single page from out of this mess. This entire mission was officially shot.

Then the augment paused, looking back down at the passed out magi.

Or maybe it had succeeded beyond all expectations. After all, a prisoner could possibly be more valuable than books could be. Regardless of whether he would talk, he had come here with the direct intent of foiling the PWCD's and U.S. military's mission. He had demonstrated superhuman abilities. He was here working with at least 5 other agents. This prisoner may not be willing to talk, or even know much, but based on what he had just been a part of, he at least knew more about the subjects of these hidden book and artifact caches than the PWCD currently did.

Jarvis grabbed the man's body and made his way toward the U.S. marines, confident that they had either killed or chased off that last hostile by now. If they didn't, then he was fairly certain that he could manage to take another prisoner just for the sake of it.

xxXxx


	7. Behind Closed Doors

**Behind Closed Doors**

The human psyche is a rather odd thing.

The human mind reacts to situations in a way that works contrary to what logic would usually dictate. When faced against a threat that the human in question is uncertain of their ability to survive against, the logical decision would be to flee and avoid the threat at all costs. The human mind instead, gives off two completely different options. The human mind will react by either preparing to fight, preparing to run, or even do a little of both. When the human mind is encountered with a non-winnable situation, it often holds onto the hope that there is a means of escape that hasn't been located yet. On the other hand of the spectrum, when an option to succeed is visible but nearly impossible, the human mind sinks to acceptance and depression more often than not.

Scientists have been at work to discover the inner workings of the human psyche for as long as people were able to conceive the concept of a psyche. Despite this, there are many things about the human mind that have yet to be solved or even properly explained.

One certainty however, is the human mind's tendencies when placed under pressure, pain, stress, and overall suffering.

xxXxx

* * *

In the United States of America there was a multitude of PWCD bases. The nation had a sizable population, and a rather large number of youkai living in the country incognito. The creatures in the states weren't nearly as much of a problem as they were in other parts of the world. This was generally assumed because America had the title of 'world's strongest military', and wore the title like a medal. Just as well, the U.S. was home to the most successful businesses in the world, which attracted the attention of many wealthy non-human investors, who most of which tended to be vampires. The combination of the country being a vampire hotspot, and home to the most powerful human military made the youkai of the area a lot less rowdy than usual. This left most of the PWCD bases in America with little to no activity as far as anti-youkai operations went.

Area 51 was one of those bases.

In the lower levels of the Nevada base, the various members of the base were in motion. After all, why wouldn't they be? For the first time in years, something was taking place inside the PWCD base that was worthy of note. It wasn't anything large, like the several bases in Japan frequently dealt with. It was something much more casual.

A prisoner had been brought in to the base.

A non-human prisoner was to be interrogated, and apparently this prisoner was special enough for a quite a few noteworthy people to arrive for viewing. The PWCD president himself had appeared at the base, which made the usually lax environment of the base extremely tense and tidy. And he wasn't the only guest of honor either. The U.S. secretary of defense had made an appearance as well. The little information that could be found about this prisoner had become nearly common knowledge to anyone on the premises. This prisoner had been captured in a joint operation between the USMC and PWCD, which made the U.S. order that they observe and learn firsthand what the prisoner had to say. The PWCD would've preferred taking their prisoner to a base in Japan, where they would have full control over how the treatment of the prisoner went.

So a compromise was reached.

A PWCD base established in Nevada was to host this event while the U.S. government sent a single person to oversee it. In this way, the black operations organization would be able to work without any outside handicaps, just like they preferred. In exchange, the U.S. would know full well how the PWCD dealt with inhuman prisoners as well as any information that could be useful, such as why the prisoner had been sabotaging their operations.

When a time frame for how long the interrogation would last had been asked by the secretary of defense, the PWCD president informed the man that the interrogation itself would likely only last a few hours to a day. This was stated with complete confidence. The U.S. secretary smirked, thinking it was a joke. After all, some of the prisoners the U.S. had captured required several months of non-stop interrogation before they finally cracked. The PWCD president simply responded with this statement:

"We aren't handicapped by humanitarian laws."

The U.S. secretary of defense was confused by his words until they finally reached the observation room, which let them see into the screening room.

On the other side of a one-way glass was a single man in an all-white tile room. The room held one desk and two chairs, one of which held the prisoner himself. He was stripped of every single article of clothing save for his undergarments, clamped to a reinforced steel chair, and had been left without anything to eat for a day. No one had entered the room to talk to him for the entire time, simply leaving him there to sit. The prisoner certainly looked human if the defense secretary was asked. He had brown hair and blue eyes, an unusual but not unheard of combination. He was well built and sharp, but clearly not a trained soldier. The U.S. secretary couldn't exactly explain why, but this man gave him the impression of a trained killer without showing any mannerisms an actual soldier would demonstrate. It was like he was somewhat prepared for this situation, but not actually sure what would happen over the course of his interrogation.

Finally, the door opened.

The U.S. secretary had to pause and take off his glasses for a moment as he got a look at his first augment. What he saw was something he realized that he'd never forget. Standing in the doorway was a man in PWCD fatigues that was easily over 7ft in height. He actually had to bend down to enter the room. The second thing he noticed, aside from his height, was his massive build. It looked like he had muscles stacked on top of other muscles! His face wasn't anything super outlandish. A strong jaw, brown eyes, and black hair. He looked plenty dangerous by his size alone, but something else disturbed the U.S. secretary about this man. The way he looked at the prisoner with silent glee had convinced the defense secretary that he was more a monster than the man they were interrogating!

This was what Jarvis looked like outside of his armor.

The prisoner himself had a look of resolved defiance imprinted onto his face the second he saw his interrogator enter. He had subconsciously made a promise to not break, for the well-being of the magical world. As both a magus and enforcer, he could never be broken by a normal man. No matter how many pharmaceutical drugs they fed their men to be colossal meat heads, that wouldn't help in any interrogation! All he needed to do was harden his skin and bones and he'd breeze through the supposed 'torture' they would threaten him with. The only reason he didn't overly reinforce his bindings past the breaking point was because he had nowhere else to go or escape. He was trapped but not weak.

Ignoring the prisoner's gaze, Jarvis wheeled in a cart with a rather... interesting set of tools on it. Beside the typical surgery knife that was known to induce fear in prisoners, Jarvis had brought things that far exceeded most people's definition of 'humane'. He had brought along a car battery and jumper cables in addition to the knife set, a few injection needles filled with strange substances, a gasoline lighter, and a few other unmentionable tools. Interestingly enough, a timer was among the tools Jarvis had brought along. The U.S. secretary could only gawk as the man wheeled the cart straight past the prisoner and toward the door behind him, confusing both him and the restrained magus. The door opened and led into a dark room where there was nothing but a table inside.

Jarvis shut the door behind himself so he could set up his workstation without prying eyes.

The U.S. secretary turned to look at the President of the PWCD, giving him a stare that demanded answers for what he was about to see. The President of the black ops organization simply told the man to get comfortable, and watch a master of his craft at work. The leader of the black ops organization claimed that Jarvis hadn't simply been picked because he had been the one to bring down the prisoner and his contemporaries in the first place. He was as highly rated as an interrogator as he was a soldier, but it was clear that the first option was where his passion truly lied.

The defense secretary wondered if it was too late to turn and leave now.

xxXxx

* * *

Jarvis had set up an improvised torture room in under 10 minutes. Now that he had everything he would need, he reentered the all-white room and took a seat in front of his prey.

This was the part of the job that Jarvis enjoyed the most. Breaking a person's spirit was much more satisfying than simply killing them in Jarvis' opinion. The knowledge that he had the power to break someone's very mind and personality was like a drug he physically couldn't overdose on.

Jarvis asked the typical questions he had been tasked with getting the answers to. Who, What, When, Where, and Why.

Who were he and his allies?

What were those inhuman powers they had demonstrated before?

When, and for how long since then, have you and your friends been operating like you have?

Where is your staging point or base of operations?

Why were you and your allies destroying information that the PWCD and U.S. government had a vested interest in obtaining?

As was typical, the man in question did and said nothing. All he did was glare into the augment's eyes with something that resembled both anger and superiority. It was the look of a man who was convinced that he had a huge advantage over you, and the only reason he didn't brag was because he would lose that advantage as a result. Jarvis suspected that the prisoner had a way to get out of his bindings, but no indication of such.

Of course, Jarvis had his kukri knife in a sheath on the back of his fatigue pants. If the enforcer tried anything, Jarvis was prepared to go a lot farther than asphyxiation if the prisoner so dared.

So without wasting any further time trying to talk with a man who clearly wouldn't speak, Jarvis got up, grabbed the back of the man's chair and pulled him into the dark room that he had prepared just for the occasion. He ignored the magi's surprised yells of 'where was he taking him'. Jarvis sincerely hoped that **it** was a genuine question and not a frightened response. If his torture victim began breaking down before he even began, then this would be a short interrogation. Jarvis liked his 'fun time' long and drawn out. He was out of the screening room and this place was soundproof. Nothing would restrict him here.

As a quick experiment, Jarvis plucked the magi's arm, and found it was nearly as hard as sheet metal. This meant that simply hacking into his victim with a knife wouldn't work, not that Jarvis preferred that method anyway. Apparently this person's abilities were indeed internal and not born from the clothes he wore to the fight. That made things a little more difficult, but Jarvis never did things simply because they were easy.

Jarvis planted his right index finger and thumb against the top and bottom of the magi's eyeball. The surprised magi made to blink and turn away the augment's hand but Jarvis simply responded by plopping the rest of his right hand into the magi's face and pushing his head against the seat. With the head immobilized, he forced the eyelids wide apart and held them there. With his left hand, he picked up one of the needles on his cart.

The magi saw the syringe and immediately realized what the man holding him down was meaning to do. No struggling helped however, as Jarvis closed in on the magi. A noise between a groan and a yell was heard as the syringe poked in just beneath the eyeball and into one of the many veins running through the eye socket.

Jarvis backed away, waiting a few minutes for the effect to come in.

The man was blinking uncomfortably and he seemed to be shivering noticeably. The room was just below room temperature, so of course he'd be cold. As he was now however, the magi was starting to react to it. This meant his skin was getting increasingly sensitive, no matter how much it was hardened. Jarvis had given the magi a drug. He forgot exactly what it was called, but the effects made the receiver's skin highly sensitive. Jarvis walked by and gave the man another pluck on the arm, and smiled when he actually saw the prisoner's arm jerk away in response, rather than lightly tense as it had before.

Jarvis walked over to the car battery he had set up, using one of the nearby wall outlets as a charger. He took the jumper cables and attached them both to the car battery. Then, he took the two other sides and idly tapped them together.

_**ZAP!**_

The enforcer flinched upon seeing the electricity. He wasn't much up to date on technology, but he wasn't a complete shut-in. He knew what jumper cables were used for, but he didn't realize they could be used on another human being! The magi took a breath and looked Jarvis square in his eyes as he began to speak.

"Alright! Alright. I'll talk." The enforcer exclaimed. Jarvis hesitated on his approach with the jumper cables.

The magi repressed a smirk as he watched the muscle bound idiot before him pause. All he had to do was pretend to answer their questions, possibly make up some story about him being of the witch species and he'd be fine. After all, there was no way they could really ascertain if he was lyi-

"Not interested." Jarvis walked behind the magi's chair with his jumper cables in hand.

"Wha-? WAIT!" The magus screamed in confusion. He was too little, too late.

_**ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZA AAAP!**_

xxXxx

* * *

The next 15 minutes went by agonizingly, both literally and figuratively.

For the prisoner, it was the longest 15 minutes of his life. He made an admirable job of holding in his pain, but his tormentor knew better. It was common for prisoners to endure as best as they possibly could at first. Jarvis would've been disappointed otherwise, as that would've meant that even petty terrorists and militia members had more toughness about them than the supposed inhuman powerhouse under his care.

Slowly but surely however, the man's facade began to shatter. Every new sensation of pain steadily chewed away at the magi's resolve. Every wound he suffered brought on some sick thrill in his tormentor that only inspired him to top himself. The magi made numerous pleas that he'd talk, but the augment ignored every single one. The magi had planned on simply lying his way out, but Jarvis didn't know that. Nor did he care. When the 15 minutes were up, the magi would have every chance to explain himself. Until then, this was Jarvis' happy time and no one would interrupt.

The timer went off.

Jarvis stopped, just now realizing that he was on a time table. He'd have to pace himself on the torture, as he was being observed after all. Turning the timer off, Jarvis flipped off the switch powering the car battery, and removed the jumper cables from the magi's chair. The prisoner was allowed a moment of reprieve, though his body was certainly better off without it.

Jarvis had given the magi another shot at around the 10 minute mark in this session, which was a boost of pure adrenaline. The magus' body began to pump more blood and offered some numbness to the various cuts, burns, and shocks that Jarvis inflicted, to a degree. During the time that the prisoner was mostly numb to pain, Jarvis had begun adorning the man in light cuts and burns. Nothing that would be life threatening, or even that painful at the moment.

Then, once Jarvis let the prisoner rest, all those 'insignificant' wounds came back full force.

The magi could only groan in agony as his wounds began to sting and ache with intensity. It was one thing to feel a wound when your adrenaline was pumping, as your mind and body were much too active to acknowledge it. After said adrenaline wore off however, all that pain came back tenfold.

Jarvis looked on in approval as the magus began shaking and hyperventilating in his chair, sure signs of him going into shock. Jarvis did nothing but let it run its course. He wasn't an amateur after all. He knew how to pace and control just how much injury he inflicted to the human body. Humans, augmented humans, and witches, all had about the same general levels of pain tolerance before they finally gave into shock, and Jarvis made sure that he didn't do enough for the overall result to be lethal. He briefly considered pouring some water over the prisoner to ease away the potential life threatening infections, but decided against it. The pain it would induce may cause the prisoner to pass out.

Of course he was assuming that the man before him was indeed semi-human, but the autopsy reports on the killed magi had indeed proven such. The only oddity in the found bodies that was distinguishing them from humans was the presence of some odd organ which differed in size slightly in each body. It was assumed that this organ was what produced those powers, but the method of how it was done was still a mystery to be seen. Regardless, it meant that if Jarvis was to treat the man before him as he would a human, then his methods wouldn't be too little or too much for the prisoner to handle.

The magus finally settled into a normal breathing pattern and slumped into his chair, looking like he had walked through hell.

Jarvis grabbed his chair and dragged the heavily tortured magi back into the screening room.

xxXxx

* * *

The U.S. secretary of defense averted his eyes upon seeing the condition of the prisoner once he had been dragged back into view.

The PWCD president on the other hand, looked on without batting an eye. Too him, this was all too familiar. Humanity didn't have firsthand intelligence to go by in non-human areas. They couldn't use cameras, spies, and recording devices to their benefit. As such, the primary way of getting Intel for the PWCD was interrogation. Seeing as most of the creatures the PWCD interrogated usually held themselves in too high an opinion (or humanity in too low an opinion) to divulge information, they had to revert to torture frequently. Since those same creatures had a greater tolerance of pain, and usually a more firmly set mind than most humans, humanitarian handicaps had to be done away with.

In short, for the sake of getting information, there was no interrogation method too inhumane to employ.

Jarvis knew this and the PWCD president knew this. The latter was merely impassive to the practice, while the former absolutely reveled in it. The defense secretary could only watch silently in morbid fascination as Jarvis pulled the abused magi up to the desk, and sat himself down on the opposite side. The augment paused, realizing he had forgotten something important. He went back into the dark room to get the one syringe he hadn't used during his session with the magus prisoner.

The truth serum. It was a drug that was often used on individuals with vital information. It was simply injected into the bloodstream and had the effect of both getting the receiver 'high' and relaxed. It fogged the mind up to the point that the receiver may not remember what it was they were trying to hide in the first place. In essence, it loosened the tongue better than any alcohol could, with no major lasting effects to speak of.

The PWCD president took this moment to inform the U.S. secretary of defense what was happening.

This was a favored method for PWCD interrogators, which always met with impressive results. The interrogator would ask the prisoner a set of questions in the same order he had first asked them. After every answer, if the prisoner answered at all, the interrogator would consult the lie detector, a machine that picked up any unsteadiness, shift in posture, or altered pitch in voice to determine whether or not the statements that were made were true. Of course the interrogator did this from a hand-held device so that the prisoner wouldn't know that a machine was analyzing his every movement. Nor were they aware what the injection they received beforehand was. The truth serum made one's body much more obvious to read, which in turn made the lie detector that much more effective.

If the machine claimed that a single answer was false, then the interrogator would simply state that the prisoner was lying and drag him back into the dark room for another session of torture. In those sessions, the prisoner's every attempt to claim he would willingly speak was to be ignored. In this way, an unspoken ultimatum was made to the prisoner.

'Answer the question truthfully the first time... or else'.

It was more of a mind game than anything. With the hidden presence of a lie detector being used in combination with the truth serum, no matter how good a liar one was, they would never be able to conceal the truth. The fact that their every lying attempt was being seen through with ease would steadily shatter their confidence. The added torture sessions, through which they couldn't talk their way out of, was simply added pressure to the psyche. To the prisoners being interrogated, it seemed as if their interrogator could see right through their facades with unsettling ease, and ruthlessly punish them for every attempt at lying. It was like the interrogator could see into their minds and peel back their every secret. It was more of a psychiatric assault then it was a physical one.

And once the torture was done, the interrogator simply restated his questions, including the ones the prisoner had already answered. It only stopped when the prisoner answered every single question with honesty, as any prolonged reprieve would give the prisoner a chance to get their wits together, and be that much harder to break.

The only times this method could fail was when the prisoner themselves were aware of the method being used, and even then, they had to have the state of mind to endure the torture. Since that had never happened before, the PWCD made sure that every single interrogator they had knew of this method.

The U.S. secretary of defense was certain that this interrogation violated the Geneva code several times over, spat in the face of humanitarian treatment, and possibly even damaged the state of mind of the interrogators who employed this method frequently. Despite all that, he couldn't argue with the results.

The magi had already answered the first question with honesty. He lied on the second question.

Who were he and his allies?

"Enforcers."

Jarvis nodded in satisfaction when the lie detector reinforced his statement as true.

What were those inhuman powers they had demonstrated before?

"Witchcraft."

Jarvis paused as the lie detector called the statement a lie.

Not that he was surprised. The way the man had to intentionally break and reconnect eye contact before responding already made it clear he was intending on lying. Regardless, Jarvis stood up from his chair and began walking around the desk, toward the magus prisoner.

"You're lying."

The magi made to struggle and resist against his bindings, but could do nothing as he was dragged back into the dark room to endure another session of torture. Jarvis shut the door to the dark room rather ominously once both he and his prisoner were on the other side.

The U.S. secretary of defense asked how many people came out of this interrogation without any long term mental scarring. The PWCD president responded to that question by saying that out of the non-humans who endured the torture, less than 20% of them didn't commit suicide soon after. Of that number, an even smaller percentage were still eligible of being labeled as sane.

Of those 20% who didn't take their own lives, all of them were abruptly executed through a lethal injection. If you had such essential information as to warrant such a method of interrogation being used, than you were better off dead so as to avoid any future incidents. Once again, a practice that conflicted with the Geneva code. Once again, a worldwide law that was bypassed by virtue of the victims not being applicable to the Geneva code.

The U.S. defense secretary requested to his government that someone else be sent in his place next time something like this happened.

xxXxx

* * *

"This is fucking stupid." Javier grunted

Jacob could only nod his head in agreement as he and his squad rode the Njal carrier across Japan. His squad wasn't the only occupants, as Tia Harribel and her fraccion; Apacci, Sung-Sun, and Mila-Rose were strapped into the seats just like they were. Rather than wearing their traditional style of dress, they were wearing PWCD fatigues and combat boots. The PWCD normally wasn't big on uniforms, but it wouldn't be good for their overall image if women were sent into combat zones in questionable attire while identifying themselves as belonging to their organization. And even still, 2 of the 4 girls had managed to make the black and gray colors of the baggy uniform look somewhat unprofessional. Jacob shook the thought off, deciding to disregard them for as long as possible.

Grave team had been deployed to the monster world, and for a mission that wouldn't be combat based at that. Jacob and his squad mates, Avery, Eli, Javier, and 'Specter' were being sent to strictly monster held territory for some obscure reason that defied all logic and common sense.

They were going on a peaceful mission that required interaction with 'friendly' Youkai at some place called 'Youkai Academy'.

It was an all monster high school that trained monsters to integrate with humanity seamlessly. Apparently it had been a topic of interest during the peace talks between the United Nations council and the Youkai delegation. The principal of the school had claimed that his school was so successful that a human child had begun attending the school, and interacted with the students perfectly, despite them being non-human.

Eli claimed that that particular statement was probably untrue, as the very first day on Eli's temporary station as a 'resource officer', a serious attempt had been made on the boy's life by one of the female students. He did add that said woman apologized the day after and seemed to have become friends with Tsukune before they had been diverted to the war in Japan. Everyone gave the Jamaican augment an odd look at the last comment. People didn't typically become friends after one tried to kill the other. Eli's response was simply 'They're hormonal teenagers. What do you expect?'

Due to this mission having the overall goal of being non-violent, they were going in without any power armor. They were wearing fatigues, bulletproof vests, knee and shoulder pads, and had any armaments of their choosing. Apparently the PWCD commanders wanted an intimidating presence out of their augments without going for the full-on menacing effect that 5 power armored super soldiers would have on the youkai. After all, humanity didn't make it a secret that they were one bad incident away from an attempted non-human genocide, and the monsters were plenty paranoid of humans as it was. Speaking of non-humans, Jacob had to question why if this was supposedly peaceful, what exactly the arrancar were doing tagging along.

The response he received was that the PWCD wanted their arrancar to get some 'field experience', no matter how miniscule or unnecessary it was. Jacob could've sworn the operations commander snickered slightly when he saw the irritated glare being sent his way.

Well, truth be told, Jacob wasn't too worried about how the arrancar would act. They seemed to be willing to at least humor his orders, and Eli was good friends with the de-facto arrancar leader of the group. It was more the fact that he would potentially have to worry about leading non-humans against non-humans that pissed him off. And aside from that, none of them were even capable of fighting conventionally. They all were armed with melee weapons and their typical arrancar powers, which meant that the only combat order he could really give them was 'attack' or 'don't attack'. They didn't have any special forces training or experience as was mandatory to any combat personnel in the PWCD. Anything more complicated than pointing out who to kill was better left being tasked to one of his squad mates. The arrancar didn't fight with any cooperation, synergy, or coherency. They simply tried to break off into a bunch of one-on-one fights, which was ineffective against the PWCD military then, and would probably be so now.

And what pissed him off the most was the fact that his squad was chosen by virtue of having the most 'non-hostile experience' with both youkai and hollows. Jacob made it a point to pull aside Eli and tell him to stop being so damn nice to monsters and hollows at some point. He was certain that he was the sole reason his team was suddenly the go-to group for human/monster relations.

What's more, what exactly were 5 armed augments and 4 arrancar going to do at a school that taught monsters how to be human? Jacob almost lost his posture and blew up when he heard the answer to that question. 2 groups of soldiers who were both veterans of a battle through which they had fought _each other_, were traveling toward a third party's territory for the sake of 'building up relations'. They would be the temporary security while a representative elected by the United Nations toured the school. Normally, the leaders of the U.N. were all supposed to send people to show up during events like this, but decided not to do so for... a lot of reasons. So they sent a single person who would be guarded by a team of 5 augments and 4 arrancar. That last tidbit was rather interesting, considering the man probably couldn't even _see_ the arrancar. The only reason the augments could was because all the reiatsu being thrown around in Karakura had made around 93% of all the augments in the city spiritually aware.

Jacob was usually proud to call himself a member of the PWCD spec-ops, but today he only felt embarrassment. He swore this was a combination of 'misuse of resources' and 'questionable decisions' occurring right before him.

Specter, the squad sniper, was fiddling around with his rifle. Eli was conversing with Harribel about her progress in unarmed fighting, which earned him a strange look from her 3... fracciones were they called? Avery and Javier were talking to each other about which gun was more destructive, a shoulder carried minigun or an AA-12 with explosive rounds. The three fracciones were all whispering to each other about something while eyeballing Eli suspiciously.

This was the crack team of soldiers that the PWCD operations commander had expected for him to be combat-capable with.

Sometimes life simply wasn't fair.

xxXxx


	8. The Puzzle

**The Puzzle**

In war, everything changes but the root principles remain the same.

The methods through which wars were fought thousands of years ago were almost completely unrelated to how war is fought now, but still completely relevant. In the wars and battles from the Babylonian age through the Middle Ages; numbers, quality of weapons, quality of the actual soldiers, overall leadership, and the battlefield itself determined who would win a battle. In today's wars, the victor of a battle was almost entirely based on who had the better weapons and best use of them. Combat in today's world is so heavily monitored and organized that two enemy soldiers meeting in a face-to-face firefight is nearly unheard of. Fighting open battles was made obsolete by the presence of air superiority and highly mobile artillery. This made war more of a game of finding where your enemy actually was while concealing your own positions, rather than a series of battles. The actual attacks take months of planning while actually carrying out those attacks lasts for a few hours at the longest, with the combatants involved rarely even seeing each other with their own eyes. With the increase in tech scale, modern warfare was reduced more to a series of small skirmishes than any actual battles.

Any military would tell you that they focus on getting the best results with the least amount of effort possible. Why send in a full-fledged army to destroy an enemy army, when a handful of computer piloted drones could do the same task with little effort? Why launch a coast wide invasion on a country to capture a specific individual, when a small but well equipped team of specialists could complete that same task with significantly reduced risk?

If war is hell, then hell is becoming increasingly more industrialized and political every day.

xxXxx

* * *

A castle in England wasn't a particularly curious sight.

For whatever reason, rich people quite enjoyed renting out large plots of land and building honest to God castles in the middle of nowhere. The construction companies in charge of doing so never really questioned it. Sure, building a mansion or resort in an open location was many times more sensible and economical than building a stone castle, but so long as they were paid they didn't look too deeply into it. Curiously enough, the transaction and building records of such castles tended to disappear after construction was complete, with the people in charge of such things usually suffering from spontaneous amnesia, but again no one ever looked too deeply into it.

Of course this was a huge lie.

The government of the U.K. had made sure to start secretly backing up their records once they realized a string of major building records were being lost unexplainably. They had begun doing this during the 1920's, a few years after the PWCD was formed. It barely registered as a ping on the radar then, but governments didn't survive by dismissing anything just because it wasn't readily apparent. As of the 21st century, they still made it a routine habit. They had sent secret investigations, but every time they sent someone, those agents were either killed in an 'accident', disappeared or came back to claim that they had found nothing at all. The two later instances were extremely rare, but they happened regardless. The United Kingdom's government wasn't stupid by any stretch of the imagination. They knew for certain that some sort of group was throwing off their operatives whenever they investigated into the many castles scattered throughout their country without any proof of registration.

So they went a different route. They brought up those backup records and located who exactly was paying for them. A multitude of names came up, but the information they gathered on the buyers was pretty curious. Nearly all of the purchased castles came from the banking accounts of rather prestigious families, but their personal records were always... off. The children of these families passed elementary, middle, and high school with flying colors. The colleges of Great Britain were practically throwing scholarship offers at these children, but not a single one of them ever accepted. Instead, they essentially dropped off the face of the earth for a few years, and reappeared as well educated as any college student, and proceeded to succeed their families' wealth and continue the cycle.

And nearly all of those students were last seen somewhere around London, near the British Museum in particular.

Seeing the correlation, the British government sent agents to observe the Great Museum, installing hidden cameras and such to figure out just what was going on. Despite all the concentration focused onto the museum, and London in general, nothing particularly noteworthy could be found. However, on sheer coincidence, several agents in the British Government started to notice that for all the people who entered the building, a slightly smaller number of people actually left. The number wasn't significant, only around 10 or 11 people out of groups of hundreds were left unaccounted for. After all, you actually had to sign yourself in to a museum to enter it. The problem arose in that when the names of those people were looked in to, their names had been removed. So the British government had begun backing up the names of everyone who entered the British Museum, and then cross referenced them with the list of names of the museum after a few specific names in particular were already cleared out. The two lists of names were compared, and the names of those who didn't appear on both lists were recorded and set aside.

After more investigation to those names, their places of residence, accounts, and overall activities were heavily monitored. Nearly all the names that had disappeared inside the British Museum reappeared around 4 or 5 years later. The British government had realized that the museum was apparently home to some sort of unsavory group, but decided against sending anyone in to investigate. After all, everyone they sent into this case directly tended to disappear.

So instead, they prepared a secret operation. In the event that something happened, they were prepared to send Special Air Services or SAS special operatives to storm the building and search it from head to toe, while they would additionally surround the building with royal marines. Any resistance found was to be captured alive if possible, but they were not against using lethal force.

Then something big happened.

A joint operation between the USMC marine corps and PWCD black operations was sabotaged by cloaked aggressors who wielded unnatural powers that varied from manipulating fire to increasing their skin density to match sheet metal. Of those aggressors killed and captured, their bodies were taken and ran through any databases that could be found to find their nationality, if any.

Several of their faces hit a match with the U.K.'s databases for those to have disappeared within the British Museum within the past 20 years.

Once informed, the PWCD began sharing information with the U.S. and U.K. about all they knew of the situation. The PWCD president, U.S. Secretary of Defense, and British Minister of Defense all met inside a PWCD base on the coast of England. The United Kingdom had the most information to share. They had accumulated knowledge over the potential capital, identities, and smaller bases of what had proven to be a hostile global organization. The U.S. had brought forward that they too had noted a good few of their operatives going missing on investigation of similar cases and building records of several structures being removed from private companies' databases. They had never investigated too deeply into those leads as they hadn't experienced much in the way of unnatural incursions on their own soil. The PWCD had brought forward their raid of a similar castle in Japan and making quite a few intriguing finds in the castle's lower levels. To top off this sharing of information, they brought forward all the information that had been yielded as a result of the prisoner interrogation.

What they knew so far was that a witch-like species called magi were spread throughout the human population, who preferred to live in castles and erase themselves from any official records to avoid being tracked. The only biological difference they had from humans was that there was the presence of a strange organ that presumably granted magi their powers. The overall community they lived under was called the Magus Association, who had a force of agents called 'Enforcers'. Those agents were tasked with concealing the existence of their species and the so-called 'magical world' by whatever means they deemed to be necessary, which apparently included attacking military personnel.

Before any further answers could be gleaned by the PWCD, the prisoner finally lost his senses and committed suicide by flooding his head with energy to 'reinforce' it. Apparently the method through which he did it destroyed his own brain, allowing for a relatively painless passing. The interrogator seemed angrier at having his prisoner 'take the coward's way out', than he did at the fact that the prisoner hadn't answered all the questions.

Regardless, the information gathered was more than enough to come to the same conclusion. This Magus Association was deeply rooted and capable of manipulation to a dangerous degree. They posed a global threat and had made a sabotaging attempt on the dealings of military personnel.

The Paranormal Warfare Contingency and Division organization had been created for the global defense of humans and counter-offense against all hostile non-human and subhuman entities. This was now their domain of operation, and the PWCD president claimed that they would begin deploying counter operations against the Magus Association immediately.

The United States and United Kingdom representatives disagreed.

With the PWCD's failure to halt the invasion of Japan that had all but destroyed the proud country in a few days, neither of the worldly powers felt content to leave their safety in the hands of those that they felt wouldn't be effective at it. Should these magi be attacked and declared neutralized as a threat before they were completely destroyed, then a repeat of the Japan massacre could happen on a global level. The PWCD president argued to the contrary, claiming that due to the conditions under which humanity had instated the PWCD, this was solely their business, and that to choose otherwise was in direct offense to the global agreement that the entire world had come to. The president claimed that the occurrence with the Youkai was an improbable event born out of a single vampire reorganizing Fairy Tale while the PWCD was preoccupied with the sudden hollow invasion that came at the exact same time. If Aizen and his force of hollows and arrancar hadn't come, the PWCD would've seen Fairy Tale destroyed down to the last Youkai, starting with Gyokuro herself.

The minister of defense countered this argument by saying that was only further proof. The PWCD was certainly effective at what they did, but far too few in number. The entirety of the PWCD armed forces consisted of roughly 5,000 augmented super soldiers broken up into different specialized groups, several hundred unaugmented field operatives, and a rather large air force that consisted of 50 or so jets, 150 helicopters, 20 Njal Carriers, and 3 AC-130 gunships, along with a small set of tanks that had been labeled as unusable after heavy power armored suits began to see field use. After the war in Japan, the PWCD had lost hundreds of augments to the fighting, had 7 of their jets, 46 helicopters, and 1 AC-130 gunship shot down, and taken numerous injuries and setbacks across the board. The PWCD had been sufficient in managing the Youkai species with what they had quite easily, but had their resources strained when the hollows had appeared. With the addition of this new force, this 'Magus Associaton', the PWCD may collapse altogether from having to manage three different hostile species all at once.

The PWCD president insisted that the organization was well on their way to recovering, and would be fully capable of managing those threats within a few years.

The U.S. secretary replied that the non-humans of the world wouldn't wait for the PWCD to recover.

It was clear to everyone in the room what was being insinuated, but the U.S. secretary of defense went forward to finally voice it. The PWCD simply wasn't enough. Had they only been dealing with the Magus Association, the PWCD might have been sufficient enough of a force. The same applied to the Youkai and Hollow species. Any one species, and the PWCD would've been able to manage without trouble. However, there were three hostile entities in the world that posed a threat, _that they knew of_. The PWCD couldn't realistically be expected to handle that many potential enemies of the human species all at once, especially in their current state.

The PWCD president had wanted to argue, but realized that he wouldn't get anywhere doing it. They were right. The PWCD was harrowed in responding to hostile hollow incursions across the planet, and while the youkai had certainly quieted down, that certainly didn't mean they'd remain that way forever. As it stood, the PWCD could focus on any one threat with success, but not two. Or God forbid all of the non-humans organize an attack at once. What was worst, with the annexation of the arrancar into the PWCD, it was learned that Aizen had actually _influenced_ a youkai invasion to happen while he carried out his own movements. Had the full arrancar and hollow force come straight to the living world, rather than destroy Soul Society and lose most of their hitting power, then the PWCD would've ran the very real threat of being forced to retreat and launch a strategic nuclear bomb, which would've wiped out an entire portion of Japan beyond any ability to rebuild for decades. It was only dumb luck that Aizen had considered the Shinigami of the Soul Society a higher threat than the PWCD or the Japan Massacre would've been even bloodier than it was already.

The President neglected to tell anyone that and made sure that no one else knew of such.

So he asked what exactly could be done if the worldwide supported black ops division wouldn't be sufficient. They were experts in non-human operations and had learned a great many secrets to destroying inhuman threats. They were stationed to be able to respond to any threat on the planet, or to attack any point on the globe within several hours at the longest. If they were incapable of protecting humanity from the threats they had been dealing with for nearly a century, than who was?

The U.S. Secretary replied to the question by asking why he figured that humanity couldn't defend itself.

The President of the PWCD gave the man an odd look, not following what he meant. The U.S. secretary continued on, claiming that the PWCD's experience, manpower, and expertise were invaluable assets, but simply not enough on their own. There wasn't a single country on this planet that didn't have some sort of military or defense force, the sole exception being Switzerland. Almost every country inside the United Nations had the necessary resources to build their own defensive measures against monstrous attacks, assuming they re-purposed their armies to be focused against monsters, rather than other humans. The U.S. had even made significant progress in designing its own power armor suit, which was expected to become combat capable and ready for field use within the next two years.

The room went silent at the statement.

The U.S. Secretary went on to this new armor, which was the Crysis series nanosuit, a power armor with an outer layer of nanobots that would shift and harden against any impacts on the suit itself. The PWCD president narrowed his eyes at this, asking why he wasn't informed that the U.S. was building power armor without the PWCD's knowledge on the matter. The U.S. Secretary replied that the PWCD had no say over what the U.S. produced in any way, shape, or form. The U.K. minister of defense went on to say that the PWCD had been recorded on worldwide television to be fighting monsters openly, and numerous Japanese refugees attested to the fact that they were saved from monsters by giant men in black armor. Numerous countries were now trying to build up a force that could readily fend off an assault from non-humans. Seeing as both the U.S. and China had been in Japan fighting monsters and evacuating civilians, it was likely that the country of China was producing something of their own as well. After all, no country would logically acknowledge a threat and not take counter measures.

The PWCD president frowned deeply, feeling like he knew what was coming. Of course, this was just a discussion about what to do about the Magus Association, which had escalated into something else entirely. Nothing said here was a definite decree, but it may as well have been. The U.S. was preparing to take more direct measures against the inhuman threat and it looked like plenty of others would follow suit if they weren't already doing so. In scant years, the PWCD would not only no longer be the only militaristic force with super soldiers, but would find out that they would now have to deal with outside organizations when handling attacks.

The PWCD was going to continue doing what it did regardless, but now they knew their days of total operating freedom were numbered. The PWCD's ability to deal with all matters involving non-humans was a blessing as they didn't have any real inhibitors on how to proceed with missions except their own competence. Now they would be forced to share and organized with other groups, which could detract from their overall effectiveness.

The president sighed.

The world wasn't the same anymore. Before, everything had been simple. There were humans and there were non-humans. If you were a non-human that threatened humans, then you were to be killed with extreme prejudice. If you were a human, you were to be protected and defended from monsters. No more, no less. It was quite literally that black and white.

Now, humans were actively going to be hunting monsters outside of PWCD or even government influence. Numerous cults and groups that either loathed or worshiped non-humans were starting to slowly take form, with no definite idea on how anyone should deal with them. More and more monsters were turning out to be heavily integrated into society to the point that people in government positions were under suspicion of being non-humans. On the far other extreme, there was a youkai group trying to push for mixing gene pools with humans, which was unsurprisingly being led by members of the Succubus species. Non-humans were even starting to become a noticeable addition in the PWCD's ranks, if the arrancar were any indication.

The lines that defined enemies from friends were becoming more blurry the more the PWCD president thought about it.

The meeting was ended rather abruptly. The trio of men all began making their way back to their original posts, being sure to report back their knowledge to their countries and organizations. Even though the magi were the group under scrutiny, it was sure to be the PWCD who would wind up getting a fair amount of attention as well. The President of the PWCD finally shook his head, deciding to ignore inner human politics and focus on what the overall goal was. Regardless of any disagreements in how the non-human threat was managed, the unanimous decision was that these magi were clearly hostile and needed to be dealt with in one way or another.

The PWCD president resolved to contact the magi a single time before the attacks started and try to work out an agreement. Clearly they were capable of negotiations if they could infiltrate human society as seamlessly as they did. He'd offer them a single way out and if they refused, then just like the youkai and hollows, he'd allow the men and women of the PWCD to demonstrate why monsters hid from humans.

Damned be what anyone else had to say about it.

xxXxx

* * *

The group of super soldiers and spirit beings had met with the person they were supposed to be protecting at the front of a dark tunnel just outside of a Japanese city. Both parties arrived to their destination by helicopter. It was usually preferred that the travel method for these things was done by riding in armored personnel carriers, but after a pair of USMC APC's had been recently attacked, the only method of travel deemed completely safe was by air. Seeing as the youkai would be offering direct passage into the dimension Youkai Academy was in, the two parties would land on the other side of the barrier. From there they'd wait until the youkai arrived to transport them to this academy of theirs.

So in the meantime, Jacob began to size up the man before him.

Looking back at the augment was a man who was of average height and in rather odd casual clothing. Rather than a full suit and tie, the man was just wearing a button up shirt with an open suit jacket over it. He had a buzz-cut, strong jaw, and brown eyes hidden behind a pair of glasses. The person he was looking at had a disposition that was a far cry from being any sort of representative. No matter how long Jacob looked at the man he couldn't believe that this man was a politician. The way he carried himself, the way he looked, and the way he moved were all too refined and efficient to belong to someone whose job description was arguing with others from either a table or podium.

It took a while for it to click, but when it did, Jacob nearly groaned in frustration.

The United Nations said they were sending a 'representative'. Not once did they specify who exactly that representative would be or what his previous job was before. However, Jacob couldn't believe that those in the U.N. would actually do something like this. Not only did it mean they weren't treating this as a diplomatic mission, but possibly that they realistically believed that sending an actual politician would be a wasted effort. Jacob didn't consider it his place to judge what went on during politics, but this was ridiculous! That was the only explanation Jacob could think of for why he was calling this man a representative.

They had actually sent some sort of combat specialist, a seasoned government agent by the looks of it, to be the representative of the United Nations.

The man himself was sizing up his supposed body guards as well. They were 5 men, who were each rather odd in their own ways. Despite them all being over 7ft tall, there was something that made them all distinguishable. Avery, the African American of the squad, was 8ft tall and carrying a minigun of all things, which made the U.N. representative give him a look. Jacob, a Jewish man, was wearing a fishing style hat, which kept the sun out of his eyes. Eli, a Jamaican, was the single person in the squad to not have any firearms on his person at all. Instead, he had a pair of swords on his lower back along with an assortment of throwing knives. Then there was 'Specter', who apparently refused to be called by his real name and never took off those goggles, re-breather, and balaclava from his face. Finally there was Javier, seemingly the most normal person in the entire group... who was carrying a modified AA-12 shotgun along with an arsenal of explosives. The U.N. representative wasn't an expert on military affairs, but he was fairly certain that these people were rather... over-equipped for what they were supposed to be doing.

For the sake of convenience, he had been given a pair of PWCD issued ectoplasmic-vision shades, which would allow him to see spirits and any other being made out of ectoplasm.

So when the representative turned to take stock of the other half of his guard, he had to pause and take the glasses off his face for a moment. He rubbed his eyes rather thoroughly and massaged his temple. He calmly told himself that he was just imagining seeing a bunch of women, mostly teenagers, armed with melee weapons. He calmly told himself that there wasn't a single person in the world who legitimately thought giving kids swords to go fight monsters was a good idea, no matter what kind of freakish powers they had. With that said, he put the glasses back on and looked.

They were still there, and 3 of the 4 of them looked somewhat insulted.

The U.N. representative pointedly turned away from the 4 women to look at Jacob, the supposed 'squad leader' of this group. The representative's face looked like he had swallowed a lemon and bit his tongue at the same time. Jacob didn't even wait for the man to ask the question, already knowing what it would be about.

"Command thought it would be a good idea." The augment shrugged.

As an augment, Jacob was somewhat used to the curve balls the 'secret world' tended to throw at you. The man before him had no such experience. Humanity was just coming to terms with the fact that there were indeed monsters in the world and that super soldiers existed in real life. He could only imagine how someone would handle being exposed to all this.

The representative shook his head in astonishment. He was on a government appointed mission to inspect a high school of monsters in another dimension. For that mission, he would be guarded by the biggest squad of misfits he had ever laid eyes on. If that weren't bad enough, there were apparently a few under-aged ghost women with swords and chakrams who would be tagging along, and he could only see them by putting on a special pair of sunglasses.

What the hell was the world coming to?

The U.N. representative decided that this was probably a bad dream and he'd wake up at any moment, but just for the sake of seeing how everything played out, he'd take this seriously. What could be the harm? Things were already going to hell anyway, and none of those youkai things were even here yet. He pointed out the apparent leader of this group, the man with the fishing hat and stereotypical squirrel-tail beard that Scottish people were said to have during World War 2.

"You soldier, what's your name?" The augment in question straightened up at the order.

"Jacob Price. Squad Leader of Grave team." The U.N. representative figured it was taboo to name any military unit anything that involved dying, but held his tongue on that particular statement. "What of you sir?"

The supposed 'representative of the human race' smirked at the question. "Mitch Rapp. CIA agent and apparently a temporary United Nations representative."

xxXxx


	9. They Came From Above

**They Came From Above**

_Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others._

_-Timo Cruz_

xxXxx

* * *

The United Nations was having another conference.

A national leader from every established country on the planet was urged to attend, regardless of whether or not they were officially a part of the United Nations, saying that the matter of the meeting would be urgent. That made sure to include that the safety of every country and every individual human on the planet would be affected by the matter. Needless to say, every single president, prime minister, dictator, Fuhrer, and any other recognized government authority figure who was physically able of getting there, attended the meeting punctually. In addition, the president of the PWCD was present.

The location of the U.N. meeting, like always, was their capital building within the city of New York.

Typically, the press was allowed to sit in and air these meetings all over the world. The logic was that if all the leaders of the world were gathered together for a meeting, then all the people of the world had the right to hear what was being spoken of. This practice was first disregarded when the youkai delegation first appeared to the United Nations members. And now they were doing it again, which was making the already irritable people of the world even more suspicious of what was going on. Of course, whatever complaints there were, the leaders of their respective countries could sort it out on once they returned. The matters that would be covered in this meeting took priority over all else.

The conference went straight to the point. The matter of the conference was of the defense of not any single country or area, but of the entire human race. The non-humans of the world had announced themselves to the human population by massacring roughly 95 million people and bringing about the collapse of Japan as a nation. With Japan still in the process of being retaken by a combination of U.S. and Chinese forces, the economies of dozens of other countries had taken a hit. The equilibrium that the world had balanced itself on was now teetering, and to make matters worse, the culprits of the attack were still a major threat to the human populace of the world.

Not only that, but the youkai were revealed to not be the only threat to the human species. Creatures called hollows, who essentially lived in a different dimension, were frequently making random attacks across the planet. They rarely came more than one at a time, and when they did, the PWCD moved to neutralize them as a threat within a few hours of their appearance. Due to the nature and makeup of their bodies, they could only be seen by specialized forms of equipment, which was thermal and ectoplasmic vision. During the war in Japan, the PWCD had encountered a major incursion of the creatures, as well as their evolved forms, now identified as arrancar. The conflict had been bloody, and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of PWCD personnel, both augmented and unaugmented. The hollow attacks from that point had been mitigated to the extent of being more like annoyances, and lately had regressed to nearly non-existent levels across the board, but they were still a noteworthy threat. However, the loss of life and materials had hindered the PWCD, affecting their overall capabilities and performance significantly.

And finally, a new threat had been found, possibly related to the youkai witches. They were essentially a force of abhumans that used their powers to do things that were by all rights impossible for any normal man to do. Not much was known about this group. Their first official encounter with them was a small engagement in the city of Japan. A coalition force of 24 U.S. marines and a single augment were to investigate and bring back vital information that may have given some insight to other non-human threats. That force was intercepted by 6 magi, and the information they were hunting for was destroyed.

Before, all of this would've been left to the PWCD to sort out, who had been established specifically to deal with matters such as these. However, the PWCD simply wasn't powerful enough. They had all the necessary resources, positioning, and experience, but lacked the overall numbers and capabilities to deal with so many large scale and varied threats on their own. The non-human threat was no longer ignorable. The youkai species was already public knowledge, and it was only a matter of time before people began to realize that there were other threats besides them across the planet. So the best method of dealing with inhuman threats as a whole was to prepare counter-measures to them in the event that the sporadic engagements between humans and non-humans escalated into open warfare.

It was here that arguments on how to handle the issue began.

The world leaders were conflicted. A third of them favored strengthening the PWCD by making the organization conform to less strict requirements on who they made into augments, increasing the resources that they received, and giving the organization more operation room. Through this method, no single country was coming out as declaring war on non-humans, and they wouldn't be risking the lives of anyone who wasn't fully investing themselves into fighting the monster threat. The countries that favored this method were mostly made up of those who didn't have any significant military might and feared falling into the same fate Japan had fallen to.

The other two thirds opted to do the exact opposite. They wanted to lower the resources the PWCD received and maintain everything else. The PWCD would continue doing what it did, but rather than put such a large and dire decision into the hands of a single organization, the U.N. as a whole would develop measures to counter monster and abhuman kind. In addition, all the countries of the world would take a proactive stance to monster kind and dedicate their own militaries to the task of fighting them, rather than wait for anyone else to deal with the threat instead. Each country would be free to develop their own weapons without restriction, and as the Geneva code was directed towards fighting other human beings, all counties were free to develop any sort of biochemical and nuclear weapons they pleased. Any and all talks about partial disarmament or breaking the laws of warfare were to be suspended, so long as those weapons were directed toward non-humans, and not toward other countries.

And to ensure this, every country present, which was essentially every organized country in the world, would sign an official military alliance.

This ensured that so long as non-humans posed a threat, no country would take any hostile action toward one another. In addition, if a country came under assault from non-humans of any kind, every country present had an obligation to help them. In this way, even if a country wasn't a particularly noteworthy militaristic power or capable of putting up a fight, they could expect help to come from somewhere within moments. Humanity's main advantage was that all of their enemies were scattered and didn't seem to be capable of organizing en mass. The invasion of Japan had been decades in the making, and the Fairy Tale organization had needed significant effort to gather enough of the youkai species up for an attack. The hollow army had seemingly been in the process of assembly for decades as well, and they had been gathering for the purpose of attacking a completely different enemy than the PWCD. Non-humans had difficulty organizing, which was a major boon to what would soon become the human war effort. The PWCD president confirmed himself that it was rather easy to destabilize an enemy army if you assassinated what amounted to their general.

The magi were another matter entirely, as they essentially were humans with unnatural powers and abilities. That still didn't change the fact that they presented an undeniable threat and were willing to commit sabotage and espionage to recognized countries for their own gain. The extent to which the Magus Association extended however, was unknown, but it was apparent that they had methods of counter-espionage, as well as a rather deep integration into human society. The integration was so deep in fact, that many questioned as to whether or not there were spies in a few of their governments. After all, the Magus Association had demonstrated an evasive ability that any sort of direct approach ended with failure. This did not make the world leaders happy in the least.

And just like a democracy, the United Nations council went with the popular decision.

When the matter came up of how the U.N. would produce its own army, a lot of questions and theories were thrown around. Some argued that the PWCD already served the purpose of a national army, and that making a second one was a waste of resources. Some argued that the U.N. didn't need a personal army, as they could assemble a coalition force from the militaries of several countries within weeks, as demonstrated in the Persian Gulf War. Every single one of the world leaders were against donating parts of their army to be a part of another military who they had virtually no control over. They were already somewhat irritated when the PWCD took away their best soldiers to form the augments. Why should they donate any more personnel when the PWCD already had access to virtually all of their specialized operatives?

The Chinese representative, Hu Jintao, suggested that they form an army out of nothing but drones. At first, people took the idea as a joke, claiming that drones were only useful if they were being controlled by a person. With the exception of predator drones, drones were useless in combat. SWORD drones were very underwhelming as anything more than a self-firing machine gun turret. The other drones were only good for espionage and observation. How would an army of these possibly become of use?

Hu Jintao showed the world leaders the design for the MQ-27 Quad Rotor, or the Dragonfire for short. It was an aerial combat drone that could give supporting fire to ground soldiers. It would be effective because it was an armed drone that can act almost completely independent when not being ordered. It was programmed to fire at targets with a specific DNA set, which meant that it could be programmed to only fire on creatures with DNA that was different from humans. And the way it was programmed, when it began to run out of battery power, it would return to a nearby charger and wait until its battery was full.

The design of the Dragonfire came about through a mixture of already existing technology. It borrowed from the SWORD drone's design to hold and fire a weapon. It borrowed from the iRobot home cleaner with its ability to return to and from combat by using an internal battery gauge. Finally, it borrowed from UAV drones, its steady flight pattern and ability to be directed by ground soldiers. Most of all, the production of MQ-27 drones was quick and inexpensive. The total cost to produce a single drone, including the programming, and the accompanying firearm, was 9,375 Yuan, which translated into $1500 U.S. dollars. There was a field test scheduled, where targets with vials of monster DNA and human DNA would be scattered about, and a group of 10 Dragonfire drones were to deploy and shoot at every vial of youkai DNA while the human DNA was left unmolested.

This caught the attention of the entire United Nations council. With drones like these, warfare would be revolutionized. An army of hundreds of cheap and expendable drones could be deployed in mere moments in any environment, and the cost of doing so would be laughably cheap. Most of all, since it was programmed to not fire on human DNA, there wouldn't be any worry of the drones being used to attack another country. It was seemingly the perfect solution.

The PWCD president said otherwise, claiming that simply having a bunch of flying and self-shooting guns wouldn't be capable of taking on any potent non-human force alone. They'd make for great support units, but they would be little more than annoyances when some of the more dangerous creatures showed up. No one could really argue this point with him, as he was in charge of the PWCD, who specialized in combat against non-humans. His entire reason for being here was to inform everyone what kind of methods and strategies would and wouldn't be effective.

So Hu Jintao questioned as to what the PWCD president thought should be done.

His response was to design more types of drones. The MQ-27s would definitely be effective, but they'd get chewed up by some of the better things non-humans could bring to the table. Drones with more firepower, more endurance, and overall more hitting power would be necessary to field before this idea of a 'drone army' became fully realized.

And while this was being discussed, there was an inconspicuous fly on the wall, listening to every single detail with clarity and transmitting it back to its master.

xxXxx

* * *

Another attack had occurred from this new mystery species, in the dead of night.

These creatures had the physical attributes of vampires, but the speed of augmented super soldiers. However, there wasn't just one of the monsters, but 3. Their target had been another quiet town, this time all the way out in Russia. A trio of the red-eyed monsters had callously strode into the city and begun to massacre every single person in sight. To make matters worse, they started to create ghouls as they went, who in turn began to attack and kill the people of the town as well. Those people turned into Ghouls and continued the cycle. What the dead apostles hadn't counted on however, was that Russia was the home base to the most brutal and destructive division of augments in the PWCD.

Shock Troopers.

Of all the augments in the PWCD, shock troopers were considered the most unstable. They were soldiers who made the willing choice to attack from the sky in a highly combustible jet-pack that could kill the wearer if it detonated, hit the ground at nearly 100 miles per hour within the midst of enemies who typically favored close combat, and attack those enemies with a combination of point blank shots and melee with short and sturdy cleavers. The very description of what they did implied they were somewhat insane, the fact that most of them actually tended to enjoy doing it further reinforced this idea. The majority of people that joined the shock trooper corps were made up of conscripted prisoner soldiers and registered sociopaths. They were men that made even the most hardened augments of the PWCD uncomfortable with their presence.

Then there was the de-facto leader of these men, Yuri Boyka.

Leading a group of 10 shock troopers through the air was a mammoth of a man, who carried a large two-handed hammer in his hands that was almost as long as he was tall. The group of 11 super soldiers tore through the skies; their jet-packs accelerating them to a speed that made them appear more like missiles than men.

The augments had only received word an hour ago that there was an attack. In that time frame, they had equipped themselves hastily and left, forgoing the wait for any aerial transportation. The town that had been attacked was only about 30 minutes distance from the hidden PWCD base anyway. Yuri knew that soon, the entire base's supplement of soldiers and vehicles would be on their way to the town within the hour. That left the shock troopers roughly 40-50 minutes to have their fun.

The trio of dead apostles paused in their gruesome feeding, perking up to the sound of jet engines in the air.

The shock troopers were just passing over the city, using their helmets to peer down into the streets for a decent point of attack. All across the streets, people were fleeing from creatures that appeared to be zombies. The creatures were biting and devouring every person they caught like savage cannibals. Yuri grimaced. Usually, the splash damage his hammer caused was inconsequential. Now however, if he simply flew down and started swinging, he'd likely kill just as many civilians as he would cannibals. He'd have to leave the matter of protecting the civilians to the rest of his squad. Meanwhile, he'd go find the creatures responsible for this attack.

"Polar team, go down there and protect the civilians. Give them the opportunity to escape." The hammer wielding augment ordered before nose-diving down to the town.

"What about you, Commander Yuri?" The squad leader of Polar team questioned, also taking his men down to the battlefield.

"If this is anything like the last recorded incursion, then there's a creature running around that caused all this to happen. I'm going to find it." Yuri stated, not breaking from his trajectory toward the ground.

There was no battle cry. There wasn't a group of youkai below them, who were about to get brutalized. There wasn't a hollow below them that was about to get chopped up. There was nothing here that made shock troopers perk up in excitement. All they saw were fellow humans who were being harrowed by creatures that had no right to exist. The town was in mortal danger, and the PWCD needed rectify this problem.

Across the town, 11 shock troopers impacted the ground, each one displacing the earth around them. Dead apostles and humans alike took notice of the impacts. The shock troopers landed in the midst of the ghouls, their impacts alone throwing the cannibalistic creatures off-balance. The fleeing townspeople were too deep in terror to notice that the shock troopers were landing in between them and the ghouls. They didn't even notice that when these massive black armored soldiers started shooting and hacking at everything that moved toward them, they were only killing the ghouls. The people simply turned and fled, not realizing that they were being saved rather than attacked.

The shock troopers were perfectly fine with this. If all the civilians fled from their presence, then that meant they wouldn't have to determine as to whether or not someone who was running at them screaming was either a vicious cannibal or a panicked person asking for help.

The squad leader of the shock troopers was lashing out at every creature that came his way. With a Krebs AK-74 in one hand and a cleaver in the other, every ghoul that came near him was killed quickly. When the creatures swarmed him, he lashed out with his gun and blade. When those weren't immediately viable, he lashed out with vicious kicks that caved in chests and shattered skulls. When the cannibals were too close to shoot, kick, or stab, he smashed his own helmet into the faces of the ghouls, busting their skulls open. His fellow shock troopers followed his example, destroying every single non-human within reach.

Ghouls were devoid of any survival instinct. Their hands and teeth could never damage the augment's armor. Their sluggish and lacking movements couldn't keep up with the efficient and brutal attacks the shock troopers could dish out in spades. Their numbers couldn't threaten the super humans, especially when they could casually reposition themselves by flying up into the air and coming back down wherever they wished. With guns that hurled the creatures backward with every single shot that impacted, they were only getting close because the shock troopers wanted the ghouls to be within cleaver range. The ghouls were being massacred, and there was nothing that could be done to stop this.

Yet the ghouls didn't pause or hesitate to hurl themselves into the meat grinders that were close quarters equipped shock troopers.

Every time a ghoul was cut down or blasted backward by the shock troopers, another took its place. However there were only so many ghouls that could come, and the augments had more than enough stamina about them to keep hacking up or shooting down any more that came. If it was a matter of attrition, than the shock troopers couldn't lose.

One of the shock troopers got airborne, so as to avoid being dog piled on by more ghouls than he could fight off at once. Just as he was about to slam into the ground again for another round of fighting, he spotted two figures in the distance. They were walking among the charging ghouls like it was natural, and the cannibals themselves paid the two beings no mind. The shock trooper zoomed in on the two with his helmet, allowing him a better view.

Both of them sported red irises, just like all the ghouls that were running around. They both wore clothing that was oddly old fashioned and had noticeable amounts of blood across their mouths. The PWCD hadn't made any decent records on the creatures, as there weren't enough encounters with them to get a solid gauge on their abilities. However, one constant with them was that their eyes were always bright red and that they had the ability to create cannibalistic creatures out of human beings that had been stapled with the name 'ghouls'.

The two creatures stopped walking and looked directly at the airborne shock trooper, analyzing the super human just as critically as he was analyzing them.

The shock trooper quickly contacted his allies. "Polar team, Commander Yuri, I've spotted the primary threats! Both of them are coming to our position as we speak! Permission to engage?"

xxXxx

* * *

Yuri didn't hesitate to answer, "Permission granted. Ignore the cannibals as best as you can. Those creatures are our primary target."

Yuri lowered his hand from his helmet, adjusting the grip on his hammer back to a two-handed grip.

Surrounding the shock trooper commander was a perpetual mountain of charred cannibals. Yuri's thunder hammer gave an electric discharge and burst of artificial reiatsu with every swing. Even though it was designed for augments in terminator suits, the PWCD had no qualms about giving one of the weapons to Yuri, who used the weapon to devastating effect. The weapon electrocuted everything within a set distance, only avoiding killing the wielder himself because of the rubber under the suit that all power armors required one to have before donning.

Yuri had been busy scouring the entire town to find any of the creatures, occasionally killing groups of ghouls along the way. Despite all the searching however, he hadn't caught a glance of anything except more ghouls. He found it rather annoying that he was doing all this searching, only to have his target gun straight for his men rather than him.

With that, Yuri powered up his jet-pack, bending his legs to push off the ground and into the air.

With a reaction born from years of combating monsters and spirits, Yuri ducked to avoid a swipe from a clawed hand. Before the augment's mind could properly process what was going on, Yuri hoped backward to avoid a black cane-like object from making contact with his head. Yuri retaliated by swinging down at the ground with his thunder hammer.

**BZZZZZZT!**

A small crater was created in front of Yuri as electricity scattered in every direction. The figure that had attacked leapt backward to a safe distance so as to avoid being caught in the electric field that thunder hammers created. Wasting no time, Yuri drew his handgun and aimed it directly at the offender.

Looking at the augment was a strange woman with blond hair and red eyes. She was standing 10 meters away from Yuri. She wore a black formal dress that seemed like it would restrict movement, and carried a strange object in her hand that appeared to be a cane with a gargoyle head as the handle. What Yuri noticed the most about her however, wasn't that she was rather attractive, nor was it that she was unaffected by all the dead bodies scattered across the ground, but the way she looked at him. She grinned at him with an arrogant smile, but also with a look of excitement.

It was the exact same look that he had received from that shinigami with the bells in his hair.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" She stated dramatically, taking a step forward. "A human with some fight in him?" She questioned.

Yuri didn't bother to indulge her. He had spent years fighting creatures like her and this was no different. So he decided to let his actions do all the talking. Yuri opened fire with his sidearm, his Desert Eagle sending .50 AE armor piercing rounds at the woman at sonic speeds. Being augmented meant that when handling ballistic weapons, you could actually trace their trajectory before the bullets even reached their target and adjust your aim as necessary. Monsters that could dodge bullets always got a shock when they expected to dance around bullets with ease, only to get shot multiple times by augmented marksmen.

As expected, the vampire leaned out of the trajectory of every bullet that came her way, but he could tell that she was not having an easy time. Every time she dodged one bullet, there was another coming to hit her straight between the eyes. Yuri adjusted his shots every time she dodged. She needed to move part of, if not her entire body to dodge a bullet. Yuri only needed to angle his arm to shoot another one. She was steadily getting more harrowed after each shot, her dodges getting more sloppy and desperate. Yuri aimed to fire off another bullet, which he was certain would at least graze her this time.

_Click._

Yuri muttered a curse, quickly ejecting the spent clip to slam in a fresh one. He wouldn't have the time to shoot however, so he dropped the weapon instead, just in time to block the swing of her cane with his hammer. He took a step back to further brace himself against the hit. The dead apostle smirked and took another step forward, jabbing the cane forward to try and jab him in the chest. Yuri intercepted the cane by stepping back and bringing the pole of his thunder hammer down on the cane, deflecting the attack down toward the ground. He didn't know what exactly would happen if the cane touched him. After all, it was a blunt cane, not a blade or anything. He could tell by the force through which she swung it that the pole wouldn't kill him on impact, or even penetrate his chest plate. All he knew was that it wasn't a normal cane she was swinging at him, and that was reason enough to avoid it.

Yuri snapped up a front kick. She was far too close to avoid it. To his surprise, she actually leg checked him by bringing up her knee to knock away the kick. Then she capitalized by swinging her cane again, this time jabbing it at the augment's foot. Yuri stepped backward and swung his hammer overhead, down on her. She leapt back again, putting a solid 12 meters between her and the augment, just before his hammer hit the ground.

**BZZZZZZT!**

Yuri looked at the woman with a cocked eyebrow. Apparently she was afraid of taking even a glancing hit from his thunder hammer. She even took care to stay just outside his hammer's splash damage range. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised though. This was a weapon designed to kill hollows of all levels, and adjuchas-level hollows typically needed missile strikes to kill. In contrast to such creatures, here was a creature that was more along the physical ability of a watered down youkai vampire. If she took a direct hit, the reiatsu battery in the hammer would probably powder her bones. If that didn't do her in, the electric discharge carried enough volts to kill her several times over.

For once, Yuri actually found himself in a one on one engagement where he was the physically superior combatant. For some reason however, he didn't feel all that emboldened by the fact. She still had that cane of hers which was likely to be able to do some sort of magical shenanigans. Not knowing what such a weapon did would make this encounter a lot more tedious than he'd like to admit.

Of course, he could always kill her before she got the chance to use it.

Yuri charged forward, making it seem like he was going to attack her with his hammer. She tensed her legs, preparing to leap away when the augment got close. She was baffled when the augment halted halfway toward her and picked something up off the ground. Her brain jump-started into action when she suddenly saw him aiming that gun at her again.

Yuri fired a single shot, aiming for her forehead.

She ducked the shot and quickly looked back at the augment, expecting another volley of bullets. Instead she was greeted to the sight of an armored behemoth flying up into the air and making a meteoric descent toward her with his thunder hammer in hand. She cursed and jumped away before the shock trooper commander could slam onto her head.

The second Yuri landed he snapped his Desert Eagle up at her again. Her eyes widened. She was still falling through the air to avoid Yuri's impact, which made her completely unable to dodge his next shot. Or _shots_ as it were. Yuri snapped off three shots at the airborne vampire in quick succession.

_BANG! BANG! BANG!_

The first bullet, she had managed to swat down with her cane. The second bullet imbedded itself into her right breast. The third bullet went clean through her left shoulder. She crashed to the ground in pain, losing the grip on her cane in the process. She made an attempt to quickly get back up, despite the wounds she had suffered, knowing that her enemy wouldn't pause because she was injured.

_BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!_

Yuri emptied the rest of his clip into the woman before she could fully get back up. She was thrown back to the ground by the bullet impacts, and her body jerked with every single pull of the trigger. None of the bullets went through the head, but the blood loss and gaping holes in her body would kill her regardless. Yuri speed walked forward with his hammer, preparing to end the creature for good. No matter how much monsters liked to think otherwise, guns were the equalizers of men. It was simply a matter of finding the right gun and ammunition for the job. In the case of these creatures, it just so happened that AE Desert Eagles with armor piercing rounds were up to the task.

Just as the augment was about to swing down his hammer and cave in the woman's skull, her foot lashed out and caught him in the gut. Yuri was sent stumbling backward before righting his footing. Apparently she still had some fight in her. Yuri drew his gun again, this time to empty an entire clip into her forehead.

The weapon was speared out of his hands by the gargoyle cane, the very same one the woman had dropped when she was shot in midair. His handgun was broken by the hit it took, making it useless.

"What the hell?" Yuri questioned. That thing wasn't thrown at him by the woman who was currently getting to her feet. It had apparently come from the same direction she had dropped it, and shot toward him of its own accord.

"Do you like my pet?" She asked, finally standing to her full height, the bullet wounds that adorned her form all closing up, even the holes and stains in her dress. "It doesn't like it when people threaten me."

Yuri narrowed his eyes at her when the cane flew back into her hands. Like he said, magical shenanigans. Now he'd have to worry about that thing potentially blindsiding him. On the other hand, at least he knew what it actually did now. He also knew that she was capable of healing lethal wounds within moments, so if he wanted to kill her, than he couldn't really on any number of wounds to do it. Not that he ever relied on such methods to kill anyway, but here, the wounds he inflicted would barely even slow her down. Yuri felt a little cheated by that fact.

Yuri cut in his jet pack and flew toward her once more. She smirked and leapt backward, evading Yuri's thunder hammer when he swung it horizontally at her head. She couldn't risk even being caught in the splash damage. That hammer of his had energy that would make most phantasmal creatures cautious about it. Against a creature of flesh and blood, it would probably reduce her to a smear.

"You didn't think that the 25th Dead Apostle Ancestor would be that easy to kill did you?" She teased. Once people found out that she was one of the 27 dead apostle ancestors, they began to quake in fear and become unsure of themselves. After all, there was nothing more dangerous on Earth than the members of the 27 dead apostles. This human would surely cower in terror now that he knew what he was up against.

Yuri came at her without hesitation, acting as if he didn't even hear what she had just said. She was forced to dart backward once more to avoid being hit by that accursed thunder hammer of his. She lunged forward to jab him with her cane, which the augment responded to by parrying with his own hammer and striking her with a clean left hook, following up with a swift side kick to the ribs. She stumbled backward and had to leap even farther back to evade the overhead swing Yuri made at her.

**BZZZZZZT!**

"Never heard of you." Yuri grunted, lifting his hammer out of the ground and adjusting his grip on it to be more comfortable.

Her eyes widened. How could he not know what a dead apostle was, yet be completely at ease fighting one? She didn't have much time to ponder as the augment lunged at her again, this time taking a knife out of one of the many pouches and straps attached to his armor. Yuri clumsily swung his hammer down with his left hand, forcing her to leap 10 meters to his right to avoid the electric discharge. Before she could come to a stop, Yuri hurled the knife at her, which was still conducing some of the electricity Yuri's hammer strike had caused..

She was caught by surprise once more, and only barely managed to swat the projectile from the air with her gargoyle cane. Yuri was coming at her again, but this time he swung his hammer against the ground when he was still 3 meters away from her. By the time she realized his intent, the hammer had already made contact with the ground before she could get out of the splash damage radius.

**BZZZZZZT!**

She cried out in unbearable agony as the thunder hammer's electric field finally caught her within it. Volts of electricity coursed through her, hitting every single nerve in her body. It took all of her strength not to collapse then and there. She slowly began to regain her bearings, panting roughly at the experience. Her eyes widened when she realized that she was vulnerable and she didn't know the immediate location of the augment.

Her pain didn't last long however, as Yuri was now right in front her, driving his thunder hammer forward into her gut. The last thought to pass through the dead apostle ancestor's mind was Altrouge's earlier warning that had come an hour ago, when she had first begun attacking this town, along with her children.

_Your death will come at the hands of those who will commit unspeakable evils for the sake of humanity._

Basilica Vasili, the 25th dead apostle ancestor, could only ponder as to what that was supposed to mean in the milliseconds before her body was torn apart.

**BZZZZZZZT!**

xxXxx

* * *

Meanwhile, the pair of other apostles, along with their minions, were in a heated bout with the shock troopers.

The pair of vampires were keeping highly mobile, evading the shock troopers' attempts to overwhelm them with rather effective movements. All the while, the ghouls the apostles had created were taking every chance to swarm over the shock troopers when they landed.

The PWCD augments had taken to the skies, using their elevation as an advantage to attack the non-humans. They opened fire on the creatures from the skies whenever they were caught in the open, which made the two apostles resort to using the nearby ghouls as meat shields at times. After a brief verbal exchange, the shock troopers formed up and made a group nose dive toward the apostles. Having multiple armored behemoths hurtling towards you at a hundred miles an hour was not something anyone wished to be on the receiving end of. So the apostles evaded once more. However, the shock troopers were now only a few meters away from their targets.

Which led to them being engaged in a wild melee with the shock troopers.

The pair of dead apostles both had to pace themselves, even with their resonating effect. They constantly had to keep on the move to prevent from getting overwhelmed by the shock troopers. The augments chased and intercepted the dead apostles frequently, firing at them and hacking at them with cleavers, but the undead creatures managed to evade every single time. The shock troopers wanted to surround and gang up on the creatures, but they were doing a surprisingly good job of avoiding being ensnared.

The ghouls were completely ignored, as the augments simply plowed through them when they got in the way, and gave them a good punch or kick if they were getting irritating.

The twins realized that these humans were too dangerous to try taking on by themselves. The pair was also running out of ghouls, which were being used to distract the shock troopers from their original targets. Once those were exhausted, the ongoing battle would quickly result in their deaths. They could've tried picking off the shock troopers one at a time, but since the super soldiers were always within close proximity of one another, that chance never revealed itself.

So the pair of dead apostle siblings decided they'd try to get back to their mother, and fight off these humans with her help. Certainly they'd stand a better chance of fighting these combat crazy brutes together, right?

They began to flee from the shock troopers, making sure that the remaining ghouls sacrificed themselves to cover their escape. The shock troopers weren't amused by this in the least. To them, monsters were little more than game. They were humanoid prey that could be murdered any such way they liked without any legal persecution. To see such creatures turning tail and running was almost like a slap in the face. Immediately, the shock trooper took to the skies once more, hunting the dead apostles from the air.

The siblings smirked as they watched the shock troopers attacking them from the air. Under the triple resonating effect that would result from being in the presence of their mother, they'd easily kill these humans. Using the link they had to their mother, they tracked her down in the town and went to her location, being sure to avoid any attempts on the augments' part to try and shoot them. The shock troopers for their part didn't know what the vampires thought they'd accomplish by running. They wouldn't escape from people wearing jet packs on foot. They didn't have any weapons on them to attack the augments from the ground, whereas the shock troopers had plenty with which to shoot the creatures from the air. Regardless, they were going to run down these monsters, and when they caught them, no amount of ghouls would save them.

_…...BZZZZZZZZZT!_

The shock troopers also made of note that Yuri was apparently hammering away at something at the moment, if that discharge was any indication. Whatever it was that he was fighting however, the two creatures who started this mess were coming straight for him. The squad leader of Polar team was about to contact his superior, but something odd happened.

The dead apostles they were tailing had abruptly stopped.

The augments couldn't make out their expressions from this distance, but it was apparent that they were spooked by something. Regardless, they were now standing in the open, in the face of 10 angry shock troopers with a bone to pick. Without a moment's hesitation, the shock troopers began flying straight toward the seemingly paralyzed monsters, opening fire on them with as much accuracy as they could manage while booking at a little under 100mph. Armor piercing rounds came streaking at the dead apostle siblings, courtesy of the PWCD augments.

The approaching gunfire seemed to have woken up the apostles, as they immediately dived for cover and continued to flee from the shock troopers. The augments were forced to bank upward so that they didn't overshoot the creatures they were hunting. This puzzled them slightly. Why would they just stop as if they had just had an epiphany, then keep on running? Of course, none of them actually stopped to ponder this, but the monsters were still acting rather oddly. The pair was sprinting as fast as they could toward the direction Yuri was in. The PWCD augments were immediately back on their tail, nipping at the non-human's heels with gunfire.

"MOTHER!" One of the two creatures yelled in a panic, running as fast as her legs would carry her, which was quite fast. The other apostle was doing his best to match her pace. Neither seemed to even pay much attention to the fact that they were being chased by 10 murderous super soldiers with jet packs.

"Commander Yuri, the targets we engaged are heading straight toward you! We're pursuing them as we speak." The squad leader of Polar team quickly warned.

"So there are more of them then?" Yuri stated with interest.

"More sir?" Polar Actual questioned, firing a single burst of his Krebs AK-74 downward at the running vampires and forcing them to break their sprint to evade the shots.

"I just killed one. They're apparently called Dead Apostle Ancestors." Yuri commented. His voice made it sound like he was talking about something boring however. "Tough bastards, but the arrancar were much worse."

The polar team squad leader suddenly thought back to what one of the dead apostle ancestors had just yelled out. They had screeched something about their mother and proceeded to start tearing through the streets with almost none of the carefulness they had shown when they were first being chased down. The shock trooper wasn't a detective, but he could put two and two together.

"Commander Yuri, I think whatever you just killed was these two's mother." Polar Actual reported. He watched as the vampires turned a corner, evading even more bullets coming their way from the rest of polar squad.

They were beginning to come up on Yuri's position.

xxXxx

* * *

"Then they'll die like their mother, Polar Actual." Yuri stated, adjusting the grip on his hammer.

He had set his jet pack to a hover at 20 meters off the ground, so as to avoid being blindsided again like he'd been during his first encounter with a dead apostle ancestor. Since his gun had been broken by that gargoyle cane of hers, he couldn't simply hide somewhere and shoot the creatures when they rounded the corner to him. So that meant he'd have to deal with them like he dealt with their mom.

Obliterate them completely and utterly.

The PWCD shock trooper commander watched as the pair of dead apostle ancestor siblings rounded the corner, panic written across their faces. They noticed him immediately but quickly looked away, as if they were searching for something else. They didn't outright ignore him, but he could tell that the inevitable battle that would follow wasn't their top priority. He dearly wished that he had a gun on him. The greatest insult you could give a soldier was to ignore them during a battle after all.

When they came upon a pulverized and charred corpse on the ground, it appeared that they had finally found what they were looking for. The pair of apostle siblings looked toward the body with a horrified look in their eyes. They slowly leaned in until they were both holding the carcass like it was still alive.

Bullets started raining from the skies as the shock troopers finally caught up to their targets.

The two apostles, both brother and sister, didn't make any attempt to move. The armor piercing bullets started cut through them en mass, going straight through their bodies as if their skin was made of paper. Regardless, the two apostles continued to clutch that burnt carcass closer as if to protect it, even though it was already dead and they were the ones in mortal danger. The shock troopers came streaking from the sky, firing their weapons with one hand and drawing their cleavers with the other. They came hurtling down on the pair with no apparent regard for their mourning.

Yuri looked on in a sense of shocked interest. They seriously didn't intend to save themselves now that their mother was dead? He had seen many strange actions monsters would do, but nothing as extreme as this. In hindsight, Yuri figured he could've called his men off, but then wondered what the point would've been. They weren't going to let dangerous and murderous non-humans live just because they had lost the will to do so. Yuri did admit however, that he did feel a brief pang of guilt at what followed.

10 shock troopers who each in total weighed over 800 pounds, crashed directly on top of the dead apostle siblings like meteors at 100 miles per hour. Yuri wasn't even sure if they were alive to feel the impact, as any one of those bullets could've gone through their heads and killed them. They were probably killed by staying still under the combined fire of 10 assault rifles with armor piercing bullets, and not even making an effort to move. Regardless, if they weren't dead before, the sound of crunching bones and a small splatter of blood signified that they were now. That tended to happen when someone who was 4 times your weight landed on your back at extremely high speeds.

Whatever the purpose of that display had been, the targets were _clearly_ dead, which left the multiple ghouls running around as the only remaining threat.

Several of the shock troopers looked toward their commander questioningly, wondering why their enemies didn't even try to put up a fight. The shock trooper commander simply shrugged, simply deciding that the minds of non-humans were as warped as they were confusing.

The shock troopers took off into the sky, leaving nothing but a blood smeared crater in the place of what had once been a family lineage of dead apostles.

xxXxx

* * *

"Yes it's us. The PWCD beat us to the target again, and it appears that they've already done away with the dead apostles rather thoroughly."

"'Thoroughly'?"

"The 25th ancestor and her children have been reduced to a smoking crater."

"Really? Interesting. Did they have any magical or holy artifacts with them?"

"One of them was wielding a weapon that appeared to be a powerful mystic code. The others were using purely technological equipment. They did all have jet-packs however, and I wasn't aware that humanity had access to those yet."

"These super soldiers are more effective than we initially gave them credit for. Get us in touch with whoever amounts to the PWCD's leader."

"How do you suppose we do that?"

"Simple. Contact their 'augments' and work your way up from there."

"Yes sir. Praise be to God."

"Praise God, and may all his enemies be smitted."


	10. The Planning Period

**The Planning Period**

Insanity is the act of constantly repeating an action and expecting a different result to come. Delusion is a belief held with strong convictions, despite superior evidence to the contrary. Delusions can lead to becoming insane. Insanity can lead to become delusional.

But what occurs when a person suffers from both at the same time?

xxXxx

* * *

The Vandenreich had been harrowed these last few months.

Everything had started small. At first it was only small patrols and hunter teams that were disappearing or being killed. The occurrences were thought to be little more than a string of wild hollow attacks. That theory was thrown out the window when it was revealed that plenty of hollows were turning up slain as well, and since their bodies didn't so much as sport a bite mark, it couldn't have been the work of another hollow. Finally, higher tier officers started to disappear. Soldiers of actual worth and power were starting to die in ways that mirrored that of the other killings. They weren't obliterated by the result of superior power, but by precise cuts and broken necks.

So a hunter unit was sent with their overall leader Kirge Opie, to purge this threat.

If possible, they were to take it alive and bring it back to either be recruited or destroyed. The team had been sent out well over a week ago, and never reported again after the first day of their assignment. The quincy of the hunting division began to question as to whether their leader was dead or not. After all, it was not like him to disappear for so long, and with such a capable force at his side. Their overall lord and general squashed this doubt, pointing out that Kirge's spiritual energy had never shown any spike or pick up in power. The captain would never die without a fight, and if he fought then the men manning the quincy reishi scanners would've immediately picked up on such a powerhouse of energy. Instead, all they found were quick bursts of reiatsu from the hunting captain's team. Nothing overly dramatic. It was likely just a training exercise rather than a true battle. Kirge and his men were simply unresponsive and not dead by any extent.

A day later, the decapitated head of Kirge Opie was placed before the front gates of Hueco Mundo, bled out and showing signs of decay.

The Vandenreich then got serious. This was no longer an ignorable threat. This was something that had killed one of their best warriors, baring the Stern Ritter and the emperor himself. The quincy army had set a full lockdown on Hueco Mundo, halting their current plans to finish off Soul Society in its weakened state. In their midst was an ambushing predator that had already made a notable dent in their forces. Until it was neutralized as a threat, all of the Vandenreich were to halt any Soul Society related missions and hunt for whoever or whatever was killing their men.

In a far off cave in the middle of the Menos Forest, amongst the thousands of feral hollows of all classes, and amongst the dead forest and dry air, a single creature sat hiding and waiting. The one body that hosted two souls was simply listening in on their enemy. They had managed to connect themselves into the Quincy radio network by manipulating the COM system in their own armor. Every order the quincy command console issued by radio, the hybrid heard. Every sentence was analyzed. Every troop movement was tracked. The general locations of these 'Stern Ritter', were also accounted for. Once they were certain that one of these Stern Ritter was separated enough from their allies to be picked off, the hybrid would make their move on the Vandenreich by picking off their best warriors one by one. Then they'd work their way down until the Vandenreich were all but falling apart.

This was a guerrilla war. In such wars, knowledge and enemy disposition were paramount. Attacking a point that was too strong or easily reinforceable would only end in overall failure. Making a single miscalculation when attacking a weak point would end in overall failure. Too much or too little activity would inevitably result in overall failure. If they failed once, their life was forfeit and this little 'war' would be officially over. Every attack must be a victory or it would be an early death. The Vandenreich could lose hundreds of engagements and achieve only a single victory, which would be enough for them to have won the war. The hybrid could win every battle and lose once, and they would lose everything. These were the stakes for what the hybrid fought for. Regardless, it was a war nonetheless.

And war was all that the Meta lived for.

xxXxx

* * *

The president of the PWCD was fighting back a migraine as he read the reports before him.

The one thing that the president was dreading more than any number of ghosts or monsters was coming into effect the more he read into it. The U.S. production times table on those nanosuits of theirs was being accelerated a few months earlier than expected. The suits were already undergoing field testing and modifications at the moment, and yielding pleasing results to those overseeing the project. Apparently, someone realized that making an entire suit out of nanobots would be pointlessly expensive and time consuming, and that simply making an exoskeleton with nanobot armor to cover and enhance any vulnerabilities was several times more efficient. It turned out that they were right, as the production of at least 3 suits was nearing completion, with 5 more coming into the final testing phases.

And from what the reports showed, the nanosuits made ordinary humans into super soldiers that seriously rivaled the augment special ops divisions. Strength capable of moving several tons of weight, hyper-reactive armor, targeting assistance, amplified movements, and slightly improved reaction times were all given abilities that the Crysis nanosuit could provide. And overall, the process through which it was placed on and removed was so complex that only U.S. bases with specialized equipment could separate a nanosuit from its operator.

The president wouldn't have minded if these were the only troopers that he had to deal with. He would've been glad even. With the Americans starting a steady production of Crysis nanosuits, the PWCD presence in the states could be reduced and distributed to places where the PWCD presence was a little more short-handed. If these super soldiers proved that they were anywhere near as competent in neutralizing monsters as the PWCD augmented special operators were, than they would only be a boon to the organization's efforts.

But such was not the case.

No one knew where they had come from or how they had formed, but a new militant force of mercenaries had sprouted up in the woodworks, and had made their name pretty big. They were only a small band of mercenaries who only accepted contracts where they acted against non-human targets. They weren't augmented genetically or technologically. They were entirely normal humans without any potent form of support or heavy armor to even a fight between themselves and non-humans. This mercenary group was as new as could be, having only officially started working in some back water area of Africa. Even those of the PWCD who saw non-humans in the lowest form of contempt would hesitate to label such a group as a potent anti-youkai force. Apparently quite a few youkai had fled to the continent of Africa after the PWCD had started to crack down hard on non-human activities as a result of the Japan genocide, moving to the places on Earth where the presence of human monitoring was weakest as far as they knew.

Most of the monsters wanted to live in peace, but a South African warlord had discovered them when he had started to investigate into the sudden influx of foreigners in his lands. So he moved his entire militia to raid every location he knew of to have any large amounts of foreigners, murdering hundreds of humans and non-humans alike, but losing hundreds of his own men in return when the monsters organized. A vampire had rose to become the leader of the non-humans in South Africa, driving them to fight off the human aggressors through tooth and nail, even willingly giving out his blood to a select few to make his fellow monsters better able to fight. While the PWCD were preparing a large force to intervene in a conflict that had been instigated by their own kind, that very African warlord had hired the aforementioned mercenaries to kill the creature who was leading the youkai. The band of mercenaries managed to beat the PWCD to their location quite quickly.

F.E.A.R. was what they had named themselves, which was an acronym for 'First Encounter Assault Recon'.

The mercenaries swooped in on the conflict, gunning straight for the youkai commander, a vampire by the name of Strigoi. The FEAR team came in, using a privately owned old World War 2 German bomber plane to drop a payload of dirty bombs on all the major concentrations of youkai, which released a white gas upon impact. It was later revealed that the mercenaries were dropping shells filled with highly lethal amounts of white phosphorus, which burned and suffocated any living creatures caught in the general area of the blast zones. While the youkai below were dying a painful death through inhumane weapons, the mercenaries had come in wearing full body covering uniforms and gas masks. It was reported that from what few bodies had actually died of non-white phosphorus related causes, many youkai were killed by bullets coated in an oiled form of ricin of all things. Ricin was a chemical agent that killed its target painfully over the course of 3-5 days. It was also a plant capable of being grown at a common home without any special gardening methods. The fact that the mercenaries were employing these weapons in addition to lethal amounts of white phosphorus scared the PWCD president on several levels.

The next time the FEAR operatives were seen, they had marched into the South African militia's camp with full gear and gas masks and hand-delivered one of the fangs of the vampire to the African warlord.

With the youkai now in the throes of chaos and confusion without their leader, the South African militias renewed their assault with every bit of brutality and vengeance they could muster. The youkai they had fought weren't warrior tribes or naturally combat oriented species at all. They were simply non-humans that didn't want to be caught up in a conflict, but were forced to do so anyway for their own self-defense. They stood no chance in the face of the heavily equipped South African militias and had been butchered every time they had tried to reform into a legitimate fighting force. It was reported that any youkai found were being executed en mass, and through methods that exceeded the inhumanity shown in the conflict in Rwanda between the Tootsies and Hootoos.

The PWCD president didn't know whether or not he should be scared that humanity as a whole was simply watching the massacre without lifting a finger to help the youkai. In fact, PWCD agents had found out that someone was actually shipping munitions from overseas to finance the South African's genocide against non-humans. Humanity wasn't simply watching, but _encouraging_ their behavior. The president had wanted to write it all off as humanity showing retaliation for the Japan genocide, but he knew that it went deeper than that. Quite a few of the people in Africa didn't even know about the Japan genocide, despite it happening just a few months ago on worldwide television and being talked about on the news ever since.

But that mercenary outfit was what had been bothering the PWCD president more than the actual conflict. Those men had employed deadly chemical weapons in the most inhumane applications possible, using munitions that no mercenary group should've been able to get their hands on. They used tactics that would've had them arrested and tried for war crimes if they had been employed on any human target, militaristic or civilian in nature. This wasn't to mention that their actions had led to one of the most infamous (or famous, depending on one's opinion) genocides that humanity had ever witnessed.

And this FEAR team made several reappearances. In the past 3 months, they had abducted a suspected magus in India through the use of nerve gas and raided a vampire's castle to kill the entire family and staff of non-humans through the use of ricin coated bullets. It was in the latter case that they had finally found out the identity of FEAR's leader.

He went by the alias of 'Bane', which was appropriate for his almost trademark use of chemical agents.

The PWCD had tried to track them, but somehow they could never keep tabs on the movements of FEAR. The PWCD had tried bugging them, using false mission offers, and sending agents, but no method they used seem to draw out the seasoned monster hunters. It was like they knew exactly what information to trust and what information to ignore. Even the actual face of this 'Bane' character was unknown, as his only visual sighting had come from a dying vampire who had a lethal amount of ricin put in his bloodstream from the bullets that Bane had personally fired into his neck and chest. The vampire's body healed the outer punctures, but trapped in the heavily poisoned bullets, which only accelerated their effects. The dying vampire's description was that of a muscular Caucasian man who wore what looked to be like an iron muzzle across his face. His voice had a vaguely German accent that was both muffled and amplified by the contraption across his face.

The Crysis nanosuits would soon be mobilized to the field, and with these FEAR mercenaries running about, the PWCD would find themselves with far too much competition. Any large scale missions they took in America would soon become missions for U.S. soldiers equipped with Crysis nanosuits to participate in. If the PWCD took a mission that would send them into combat with a widely known and apparent threat, there was a possibility that PWCD special operators would encounter FEAR mercenaries. This would raise a slew of questions and rights that mercenaries had with which to work under, assuming that the mercenaries didn't fire on the PWCD augments on the basis of them being altered on a genetic level.

Then the president thought about it. The PWCD was a group who took already advanced and seasoned soldiers and altered their bodies to face non-humans on even physical ground. The Crysis program created suits through which the wearers became heightened and powerful soldiers. FEAR did nothing to make their men stronger, but instead made their enemies weaker by assaulting them on a genetic level. The fact that all the ammunition and explosives FEAR used were either coated in or carrying a payload of chemical agents only reinforced the lengths through which FEAR would go to win a fight, no matter the lengths. Then finally was the production of armed drones who would be programmed to only fire on non-human threats, and do so without hesitation or thought. These were simply the more noteworthy measures that humanity was going through to combat monster kind, ignoring the increase in munitions and weapons development many industrial countries were going through. Humanity wasn't being divided even further by the numerous groups who wanted to take a shot at non-humans, as the president of the PWCD had first thought.

They were only getting stronger.

The man smiled in contentment. He had long believed that only the PWCD would be capable of dealing with non-humans after having done so for so long. After years of losing and gaining some of the best men he had to offer, he had fallen into the same pitfall that caused so many non-humans to fail. He began to see his currently used methods as the only viable ones, refusing to be more flexible and open minded on the issue. He firmly used to believe that only augments could fight and win against any potent monster threat. Yet here they were, normal and unaugmented humans who were not only capable, but superbly efficient in doing so through means that the PWCD only rarely ever considered. It made the old man happy to know that the PWCD could up and disappear at any moment in time, and humanity would still be fully capable of fighting back and winning regardless.

xxXxx

* * *

The airborne super soldiers had long since been relieved of ghoul hunting duty once the rest of the occupants of the nearby PWCD base arrived.

There were now over one hundred augmented super soldiers, over a dozen normal humans in hazard suits, and numerous aerial vehicles in the town, rescuing civilians and purging the town of ghouls. Of course, samples were acquired to figure out what it was about dead apostles and ghouls that made them so highly infectious. In addition, the Russian civilians were being checked over for signs of infection and being evacuated to safe locations.

Yuri and his shock troopers gave a swift debriefing to the overall commander and were immediately back in the air, scouring the city for any large concentrations of ghouls the rest of the augments may not have been aware of. Upon sighting the umpteenth group of ghouls, the shock troopers prepared to carry out their usual method of attack, which was have everyone single out an individual ghoul, land feet first on top of them, and let gravity do the rest of the work. The cannibals were so busy devouring a dead body that they failed to notice the encroaching super soldiers.

And right before the augments went in for the kill, someone beat them to it.

The group of 6 ghouls was ambushed by a group of hooded men and women with crosses adorning their robes. In several flashes of metal, the ghouls were all pierced through at the heart and brain. The creatures all collapsed to the ground without much of a struggle. The kill was quick and efficient. By the time the shock troopers finally landed, the mystery group had already organized into a loose formation and faced the augments before them without any hesitation. The shock troopers responded to the unexpected and unwelcome aid by leveling their rifles at the hooded group, unsure if they were humans, dead apostles, magi, or whatever. All they knew was that the group before them was armed and dangerous, if that display with their weapons had shown anything.

The Church members didn't flinch, but they did subtly move their sleeves and hoods to better cover their faces, believing that their Kevlar uniforms would protect them. They also had their short blades ready, three to a hand. The augments noticed the movements, but were unaware of the material of their enemies' cloaks. Kevlar or dragon skin vests seemed the most likely, but either one would've been useless. Kevlar halted normal bullets, while the PWCD only used specialized ammunition, armor piercing rounds being the most common. Of course, the material could be laced with some sort of magic or energy as well, which would be more likely to halt high powered bullets. Regardless, if the hooded group made a hostile movement, the augments intended to find out.

Yuri spoke up first, deciding that he disliked western stand-offs such as these.

"What are you?" Yuri asked.

A plain and simple question. If they answered human, then there was a chance that they wouldn't be hostile. In that instance, Yuri would see to it that they talked to the PWCD operations commander, and find out what it was that such an obviously well trained and seasoned group of soldiers was doing here. They'd also question as to the purpose of the Roman Catholic symbol on their uniforms. If the group before them answered to that question as non-humans of any sort, they'd be gunned down on the spot. Simple.

The hooded group shifted, parting to let a singular member of their entourage walk forward to meet the hammer wielding colossus that was Yuri Boyka, pulling their hood back to see the man eye-to-helmet lenses.

Yuri blinked under his helmet when he saw the face of a rather young woman with a serious look in her eyes. She had a straight and slim face, her hair done up in a bun so to keep out of her field of vision. Her hair was dark brown and her eyes a similar color. Most noteworthy however was the fact that she seemed completely unconcerned that she was looking up into the face of a 7ft. 9 super soldier that was carrying a hammer longer than she was tall. She didn't seemed fazed by the fact that there were 10 other armored giants sporting guns, knives, explosives, and other hazardous equipment right before her. And they didn't even know that she had seen these very soldiers end the entire bloodline of a dead apostle ancestor family with no apparent wounds or exertions to show for it.

"We are the executioners of the Holy Church, members of the Vatican who hunt monsters, daemons, and heretics where they appear." She stated without missing a beat. Yuri liked her already.

"So you're human?" Yuri confirmed. It wouldn't be his first time encountering non-humans who only hunted other non-humans. He'd still kill them for not being human, but he'd at least remember to feel a little bad for it afterward.

She almost seemed offended. "Of course." She stated, giving him a hard look. The effect was somewhat diminished considering she had to crane her neck just to see his helmet.

"What is your business here?" Yuri asked, moving to strap his hammer to his lower back and signaling for the augments to keep their weapons ready.

These people were human. That alone meant that the PWCD had no reason to be fighting them. Maybe there would be a jurisdiction conflict over other humans trying to do the PWCD's job, but that would all be purely political, which wasn't in the shock trooper's job description. However, he did take note that she had said they hunted heretics, which could possibly mean him and his men. Yuri himself wasn't religious, but the vast majority of his men were. Also being a 'heretic' in their eyes could have nothing to do with one's religious orientation. It was also likely that the men and women before them didn't have the slightest idea that the men before them were humans, and had only hesitated from attacking either out of fear or to deliver a message.

"Simple. We had originally come to slay and burn the dead apostle ancestor and her children, but it seems you beat us to it." She stated with a slightly approving look.

Well... that had thrown Yuri off by quite a bit. Here he was, prepared to have to either kill or escort these...'Church' members, yet it turned out they had been planning to come kill the very targets that he and his men had annihilated. The shock trooper then frowned, giving her and her slightly relaxed allies a good once over. For monster hunters, they didn't seem very well equipped.

"You seem pretty under-equipped to be hunting monsters and daemons don't you think?" One of the shock troopers quipped, voicing Yuri's thoughts and earning himself a pointed glare from the woman and a lot of concealed frowns from her allies.

"We've hunted down creatures a lot more dangerous and powerful than her and you before." She stated brazenly at the mouthy super human, making sure to note that she saw them as 'creatures' and not human. She flinched when she heard a harsh bark come from the augment that she was directly facing. It took a moment for her to realize it was laughter.

"What a coincidence!" Yuri boomed, taking a step forward, which also caused the woman of the church to take a step back. The shock trooper bent over so he was at eye-level with the woman, ignoring the tense air being emitted by her allies and his own. "So have we." He whispered loudly in a harsh voice. That had shaken the woman enough for her to remember her situation.

"Well regardless," She straightened up, taking another step back to regain her personal space. "We didn't come to talk to you. We wish to get into contact with your overall leader."

"You mean the base operations commander?" Yuri questioned, standing straight up again. He noticed the other executioners relaxing at the decreased threat the augment commander presented.

"No, not the leader of your particular outpost. The leader of your entire organization. The leader of the PWCD." She clarified.

"..." Yuri was quiet for a moment. The PWCD president didn't simply answer to whoever came up to an augment and said that they wanted to meet their leader. There were various protocols and levels things like this went through. "Well in that case you'll have to speak with the base operations commander regardless. I don't have the authority to simply introduce you to the leader of a worldwide organization simply because someone asks me to."

"That'll be quite fine." She clarified, motioning over to her allies. The rest of the executors walked up behind her, which prompted the shock troopers to step forward and back up their own leader. "It does not have to be an immediate or even face-to-face meeting, so long as we do meet him."

xxXxx

* * *

The PWCD president had thought he heard everything.

He had sent spirit energy and power armor enhanced super humans to go infiltrate the headquarters of an army of heartless spirits. He had sent genetically enhanced supermen to assassinate vampire lords. He had unveiled the existence of an afterlife society that for all its claims of hosting the afterlife, he had threatened with nuclear retaliation if they dared to encroach on human territory. By God, he had ordered a world-wide organization to move all of their soldiers into a single island country, all to repel an invasion by another species, which they had ultimately succeeded in doing at the cost of nearly 100 million lives. At this point, a man could run in claiming that aliens from space were invading the planet, and rather than question the validity of that statement, he'd be questioning as to these alien species' numbers and capabilities. Absolutely nothing should surprise him anymore.

So why was he so flabbergasted that the operations commander in Russia had just sent him a report of the Vatican approaching the PWCD for a military alliance? The world made absolutely no sense anymore.


	11. In Another Man's Shoes

**In Another Man's Shoes**

Mercy means to not give someone something that they deserve. To not send someone to jail for theft is mercy. To not retaliate against someone who wrongs you is mercy. By definition, the act of showing mercy clashes with the prospect of justice. Justice is to punish or reward an individual for their actions without compromising from the laws through which you judge them even once. You cannot support justice and be merciful at the same time. This is simply the way the world functions, and nothing can change it.

xxXxx

* * *

Akasha Bloodriver, if she were a normal woman, would've aged an extra 25 years beneath all the stress she had to endure.

When she had completed her initial talks with the U.N., she had returned home thinking that she had averted a horrible war through which all of monster kind would suffer. And in a way, she was right. The U.N. had promised, in writing, that they wouldn't take offensive action against the youkai species unless they were further provoked into action by monster kind. She had pressed to make them alter that agreement so that they would only take action against the youkai if their species as a whole was aggravating humanity.

They flatly refused, stating that monster kind was far too disorganized for it to be possible to discern between another 'terrorist attack' and a genuine species-wide invasion. Since monster kind had already proven completely incapable of controlling their base species impulses, as well as proven to have no value for human life whatsoever, there would be a zero tolerance policy taken in response to any further attacks by monster kind.

Akasha knew that it was the humans' subtle way of saying, 'keep your kind in check, or we'll do it for you'.

However, it didn't end like that. She had taken all the measures she could to halt youkai activity against humans. She organized specialized groups to track down and stop any anti-human activities she caught wind of. She not only abolished the policy of killing interloping humans, but ordered the death penalty on anyone who tried to carry out that abolished order. She even went so far as to invite the UN to tour Youkai Academy as proof that her species was completely genuine in their desire to peacefully coexist.

But it wasn't enough.

A large amount of youkai had been migrating around the world, trying to escape the war-torn country of Japan, escape the communities of humans who may have been on to them, or simply to get away from all of their problems. If utilities weren't a major concern, Africa would've seemingly been the perfect place for that. It was heavily poverty stricken, engulfed in numerous conflicts, and saw every type of atrocity imaginable occur on a near daily basis. No monster of any kind would have to fear being exposed in such an environment. Non-humans had feared the possibility that they were being monitored every waking moment by surveillance equipment, which Africa was mostly devoid of. It was for this reason that so many non-humans began migrating to Africa, the one place in the world under human control that was largely unorganized.

And this was what led to the most brutal moment in youkai history.

Even in Africa, people were never ignorant of their surroundings. One of the local African warlords of South Africa had begun noticing a rather large amount of foreigners moving into his territory. At first he simply figured that a particularly large amount of whites and Asians were just passing through to see a bunch of wild animals, like they always did. It wasn't until overly complex mansions and castles started going into construction and entire neighborhoods were suddenly being built that he started getting offended. After all, who were these people to simply come into his land and start building homes as if they had the right? However, he knew that if he went too far, the United Nations would step in. So he decided that simply scaring away his intruders would be effective enough. So he sent roughly 25 armed men to go in and start firing their guns in the air, throw a few homemade fire bombs through windows, and generally cause a ruckus.

Only 3 of his men came back, carrying a fourth man who had died due to having his chest clawed open. The men had claimed that when they began shooting into the sky, a few of the people began to mutate into horrific creatures. They had claimed that the people living in these newly erected neighborhoods were actually demons from hell. They had managed to kill a few with their guns, but the creatures had weird powers that tore them apart. They only barely escaped because the creatures were content to scare their would-be attackers off, rather than kill them to the last man.

The African warlord didn't take that well.

The very next week, hundreds of men rode in on the backs of whatever vehicles they had on hand, all of them armed to the teeth. The warlord's militia started on one side of the foreigner neighborhood, and began shooting their way through to the other side. Every single person they found in the area that wasn't one of their own, human or not, was cut down without hesitation. Homemade Molotov's were used to set fire to all the pristine houses they found, while their guns shot down every single living being in sight. Those that were monsters tried to fight back, but faced against such overwhelming numbers and firepower, they were cut down with every attempt. Then the monsters organized by a vampire's hand began to strike back. From there, the situation steadily escalated. Monsters located all across Africa began to flee or organize for war. Likewise, most of the local pirates and militias in the continent of Africa began to prepare themselves for conflict.

Then FEAR showed up.

Akasha had never quite understood the lengths of evil that humanity could commit until she had seen the effects of biochemical weapons used on living beings. Guns and explosives were one thing. They were simply pieces of metal and gunpowder that were being launched at high speeds. Blades were fine. They were simple hunks of metal in the dirt that were dug out, slimmed down, and sharpened. Even the magic that witches used was simply influencing the world around them to act to the user's will. All of those things may have the potential to be used evilly, but in themselves weren't all that bad.

Biochemical weapons however, were nothing but pure and utter evil. They were weapons that were purely designed to cause more pain and suffering than was necessary in order to kill or maim the intended target. There were only two biochemical agents actually employed during the conflict in South Africa, but when Akasha saw the results of their use, she was deeply disturbed. The first bio-weapon had been white phosphorus, which was used in bombs to detonate on impact. When the bombs exploded, a cloud of white gas expanded outward before eventually dying out. Anything that touched that gas was lethally scorched on contact. Anything that was entirely caught within the gas clouds was reduced into a charred and petrified husk. Youkai men, women, and children had indiscriminately been bombed with these weapons for an entire day. The estimated death and injury toll was almost in the thousands and counting. There were pictures floating across the human media of the charred corpses of youkai, with headliners such as 'Did They Deserve It?' or 'A Dish Best Served Cold.'. She didn't know whether to be more horrified at the weapons being used, or at the fact that most humans seemed to be endorsing it.

Then there was ricin. The only reason she had saw ricin as the lesser of the two was because it usually wasn't immediately deadly, didn't have any outwardly noticeable effects, and already had a manufactured cure available. However, its use had been plenty brutal once it was employed as well. Ricin was an easily grown plant whose pulp from a measly 5-10 beans was deadly to a grown man. Apparently the mercenaries of FEAR had accumulated a rather large amount of ricin pulp and coated their bullets with it, because when they personally showed up to attack, they were all carrying light machine guns or sub-machine guns for the pure volume of shots. When the mercs encountered any monsters, they simply sprayed the creatures with their guns. The bullets were but pinpricks to the sturdier of species such as trolls and orcs, but every single shot injected an entire bean's worth of ricin pulp into their body. Keep in mind they were being sprayed with dozens of bullets at a time. The poor youkai were so heavily poisoned from the bullets that if they didn't immediately die from the bodily shock of having ricin pulp pumped into their blood, the actual poisoning claimed them in minutes from the sheer volume of the chemical agent entering their system. It was a horrible way to die.

Finally the FEAR mercenaries encountered the vampire himself. The man was unable to properly defend himself, having been partially caught by a white phosphorus blast beforehand. His entire left arm was burned and shriveled up, yet the vampire still fought through the pain to charge at the FEAR mercenaries when they busted into his home. He was gunned down by six different rapid-fire weapons before he even got within hitting range. Even if the bullets weren't coated in ricin pulp, the bullets shredded the front of his body into an unrecognizable mess. From there, the mercenaries claimed a fang from the murdered vampire as proof of the completion of their mission, and returned to the warlord who had hired them to receive payment.

Now the monsters in South Africa were falling apart. Without their leader to direct them or any source of strength to rally to, they were defeated at every turn by the South African militia men. Normally the UN would've stepped in immediately if this were happening to other humans. They had done so before, multiple times. Yet all they did now was watch. They felt no need to protect the Youkai from their own extremist groups, such as the very militia that was out there massacring her people, yet they were prepared to declare war on the youkai species if they so much as found a gang of monsters mugging a human? It was completely discriminatory and hateful, and there wasn't even the courtesy of trying to sugarcoat it.

Akasha Bloodriver was left wondering what she could possibly do at this point. The monster world was begging her to stand up for them, but this was a situation where doing so would only worsen the situation. The situation in Africa was a lost cause, as loathe as she was to admit it. She couldn't very well go there and fight off the South African militia men herself or the PWCD would intercept and kill her in an instant. She couldn't tell the UN to go save her kind either for a multitude of reasons. The main reason was that she'd be asking them to send human soldiers who possibly fought in the Japan massacre to sacrifice themselves for monsters, against other humans. The number of things that could go wrong from that situation was far too many to count, assuming she was successful in convincing them. She couldn't even get any support from the PWCD, as they were only meant to defend humans from attack. The human organization never once considered the possibility of humans being the aggressors, and as such could only observe the 'fighting' rather than directly intervene. The youkai were truly alone here.

Akasha Bloodriver frowned, realizing that the peace she had been looking for may very well be impossible by this point. What could she possibly do now? Humanity was almost completely against her species by now. Even with Gyokuro and every inch of Fairy Tale having been hunted and destroyed quite thoroughly, no one was satisfied with that much. Even with all the witches responsible for summoning the cannibal plants having been found and executed, most of humanity still wanted blood. Even with innocent youkai being slaughtered with bio-chemical weapons, old-fashioned firing lines, hacked apart with machetes, and everything in between, blood was still being demanded.

Coexistence was impossible at this point.

Akasha realized that no matter what she did at this point, a war was going to come. She had to wonder just what would've happened had Fairy Tale never came into existence. Would humanity still be as hostile toward youkai as they were now? Would there have been any real chance of coexisting with such a dangerous species, even if Fairy Tale hadn't aggravated them to violence with an attempted genocide? They were all moot points now. Humans hated youkai and youkai were now in a position where they legitimately had to fear and hate humans for their own safety. The tension would simply build until a full-fledged war occurred.

And now she had to prepare her fellow youkai for that very war, less they be driven to extinction once more by humanity. And unlike last time, they wouldn't be able to flee anywhere else for safety. Akasha felt a knot in her chest as she realized that she'd be preparing her species to fight against every country within the United Nations, the Paranormal Warfare Contingency and Defense organization, and possibly other secret human organizations she had never heard of. What was more, she'd have to find a way to do this without tipping off the PWCD, who specialized in learning about and preemptively stopping attempts like these.

Whatever needed to be done, the youkai race would not be sent to extinction by anyone's hand, human or otherwise. Aksasha Bloodriver swore it by her blood as a shinzo.

xxXxx

* * *

The Soul Society had seen better days.

Seireitei, the stronghold and fortress of the shinigami, was undergoing heavy construction day in and day out as they attempted to clean up and rebuild. The Winter War had not been gentle on the balance keepers as the conflict had killed off a staggering amount of people. It was thanks to Unohana and Orihime that the Gotei 13 was able to recuperate back into a somewhat organized force. Even then, almost entire squads were wiped out as a result of the conflict. There was a dire need for replacements within the shinigami ranks. When the shinigami had finally formed up to try and retake their home, they were driven right back into even more fighting, though thankfully with less resistance than before.

Lingering hollows had to be purified during the initial days of their return, and the classes of hollows varied from all over the place. Gillians, Adjuchas, and normal hollows were swarming the area, which was an improvement compared to staring down the army of arrancar that Aizen had brought against them. Regardless, even more men and women had died simply retaking their own territory from the creatures they were formed to defend against. They were supposed to be the keepers of the balance yet here they were, suffering battery and loss of life at every turn.

And now, the shinigami were struggling with passing on all the stranded spirits in Japan, as well as purifying those spirits that had changed into hollows.

That job was made significantly more difficult when the PWCD usually killed those hollows before any shinigami could show up. While both the Gotei 13 and Central 46 were thankful that the PWCD had gone to such great lengths to halt Aizen's invasion and ultimately kill him, the organization of superhumans was causing near-irreparable damage. Not even the Quincy had caused as much damage to the balance as the PWCD did and continued to do. However, no one knew what to do about them. The organization was an unignorable threat to all that the Soul Society held sacred. They were destroying the balance of souls completely and utterly by murdering the hollows they found. They were threats to the world of the dead and the living.

However, any attempts to take action against them would be ineffective for a few reasons. For one, the shinigami didn't know the locations of any of the PWCD's bases. The PWCD only revealed themselves to attack, and when they attacked, they made sure that they brought more than enough power to effectively remove a threat. Then there was the fact that the PWCD did in fact have nuclear weapons that they were willing to use on Seireitei. As of yet, there were no ways through which the shinigami could counter the gargantas and portals that the arrancar and PWCD could produce. The PWCD could infiltrate or invade Seireitei at any moment on a whim, just as the arrancar had done.

Then, beyond the fact that the shinigami were too undermanned to even think about fighting any more wars, beyond the fact that the PWCD had the ability to call to all of humanity for backup, and beyond the fact that the Gotei 13 weren't positioned to really threaten the PWCD as a whole, they honestly didn't think they'd win. Soul Society was solely based in Japan, which was almost completely abandoned by the actual people of Japan. The PWCD was based all over the world, and had the resources and numbers to simply overpower most of Soul Society's forces. And this was all assuming that only the PWCD would fight them, and not any of the other militaristic sects of humanity.

The situation was rapidly going downhill for the Gotei 13, as the balance of souls was in mortal danger. To take action against the PWCD was seemingly the only method to correct the problem, but in practice such a war would only end with the complete destruction of Seireitei beyond any hope of repair. The PWCD had to be stopped somehow, but the only other powers capable of threatening the PWCD had been the youkai species and the arrancar. The former was defeated after two days of non-stop warfare against the PWCD black ops and the latter had been annihilated by the combined militaries of the US, China, and the PWCD.

Humanity as a whole was beginning to progress too far for their own good. It was now at a point where they threatened every single corner of the planet with only a fraction of their military strength, that fraction being the PWCD. Then that fraction was supported by the rest of the whole, which was essentially what the United Nations represented. Between the two powers, humanity could casually destroy the youkai, cleanse Hueco Mundo, and destabilize Soul Society in a single organized nuclear strike.

They had to be stopped, less all order in the world be shattered beyond repair.

xxXxx

* * *

The creatures called dead apostles had been making more and more attacks across the planet, and they were already becoming a rather tenacious threat to humans. It wasn't because of them individually, but for their ability to spread casualties by spawning 'ghouls' out of the people that they attacked and killed. Had they done something like this within a heavily populated city, they could cause a large scale epidemic. They needed to be extinguished immediately.

And the humans had just discovered the whereabouts of another one. By using visual DNA scans and observing hospital records, the US government could keep tabs on anyone who had ever entered a hospital in their life, which should be almost every human living in a 1st world country. When they first learned that there were non-humans amongst them, in high places, they began to ascertain the identity of every single person in the country. When a handful of tenants in DC with no official birth record had been found they all covertly had pictures of their faces taken and compared to any databases that could be accessed. It just so happened that one of the tenants had perfectly matched faces with someone who had been listed to have died over 30 years ago.

Living in the slums of Washington was another apostle that had been silently making a living for itself. From what had been monitored, it had been acquiring blood packs from a nearby hospital somehow and locked itself away in its apartment. All of his payments were done punctually, in cash, and often done in a manner that prevented the creature in question from making any human contact. It didn't seem to be making any hostile movements at the moment, but that could easily change on the flip of a dime. Someone needed to move in and remove the threat without causing much collateral damage.

The first thought was to send in a SWAT team or two, but the PWCD advised against such a move. Dead apostles were proven to be capable of dodging bullets and matching augments in close quarters combat. Sending normal men against such a target in an enclosed space was a massacre waiting to happen. The PWCD prepared to dispatch a 3 man squad of augments to storm the room and quickly kill the apostle before his threat level escalated.

Then, without warning, that apostle turned up dead courtesy of a sniper's bullet.

At the same time, a plane flying to America from Europe over the course of a two day flight was affected by some sort of attack. Screaming and panicking were heard over the radio for just under 30 minutes. Then the brief sound of gunshots and inhuman yelling was heard, before silence once more reigned. From then on, whoever was piloting the plane changed frequencies. The PWCD and US both hacked into the changed frequency to listen in on what was being said.

From the following conversation between a male and a female, it was quickly realized that the plane had been overtaken by ghouls, and that magi were also involved.

The PWCD went into action immediately. It would've been best to simply fire off a single guided missile and cover up the crash as a tragic accident. Of course with all the monster hysteria going on, no one would believe it, but better the government be criticized by conspiracy theorists then questioned for competency. However, those two magi were apparently partially responsible for the incident seeing as they were in the center of it all. The PWCD wanted to capture them both, and the organization already knew where both of them were located. They mainly wanted the female magi who had seized control of the plane itself. After that was completed, they'd then shoot down the plane.

A boarding action by augments would be best since they had proven that ghouls were hardly a genuine threat to the super soldiers. This was a mission best left to PWCD shock troopers, as it would be a mostly aerial based mission. The issue lied in the fact that the majority of shock troopers were mainly based in Russia, and the few squads that weren't, were out on different assignments. By the time any of the aerial specialists arrived, the plane would have already landed and started dispersing ghouls. The magi on board the plane seemed to be concerned about that as well, but she apparently saw reaching the mainland as more important than releasing over one hundred ghouls out into an area that was, as far as they knew, completely unprepared to react to the threat. The PWCD couldn't help but question why the magi didn't simply land the plane in the water and escape by boat.

So the PWCD devised another method. It wouldn't be as efficient or clean as an operation with shock troopers would be, but it would work well enough.

xxXxx

* * *

Natalia was only barely keeping herself from hysteria.

She was trapped on a plane that was covered in blood and infested with cannibalistic ghouls. The creatures weren't trying to break into the cockpit any longer, but the simple presence of them kept here on edge throughout the night. She was deprived of sleep, and only constantly talking to her apprentice Kiritsugu kept her from losing her calm entirely.

Natalia silently wandered if the kid had it in him to do what she expected him to. When she had first taken him on, the kid had made it his life's work to rescue as many people as he could from tragedy. As of now, he had the choice to let her land and save her, but doom countless people at the same time, or save those people at the cost of her own life. If they had switched places, she would've shot down the plane without hesitation, and while she had no desire to die, she certainly wanted to know whether or not the kid was really ready to take on her way of life yet. How ironic that the final test to becoming what she wanted him to be would be to end the life of the person who had taught him in the first place.

The airliner's cockpit was suddenly eclipsed by a smaller form above it. Natalia frowned as she realized that the plane was currently flying over the clouds. There shouldn't be anything that could cast a shadow over her at this elevation except...

Her eyes widened and she felt the plane lurch.

Flying over the airliner was a PWCD N'jal carrier. The vehicle lowered its rear hatch in midair over the plane, adjusting its speed to perfectly mirror the movements of the plane below it. Since the airliner was several times larger than the N'jal carrier, the PWCD pilot couldn't simply hover over the vehicle and slightly adjust whenever it altered its course. It had to be close enough to allow the augments an easy time of latching on, but stay away far enough that the two planes didn't clip each other.

The PWCD had been active for almost 100 years, and over the course of all the insane methods they had used, this would honestly be their first time claiming that they had boarded a plane by using another plane while both were in flight.

The augments of Sigma squad dropped from the back of the N'jal carrier, steel cords attaching them to their plane so that they wouldn't have to fear falling to an untimely death. And in case the cords they were using got damaged or broken, they were all wearing parachutes. Four men dropped onto the top of the plane, the weight of all their equipment letting everyone and everything on board know that they were there.

The augments would need a hand free for this mission since they were using a magnet in one of their hands to stick to the plane. Their other hands held an assortment of sub-machine guns and machine pistols with extended magazines. Since they couldn't reload all that well in midair with one hand, they'd have to manage by simply picking their shots carefully.

The four augments clambered across the plane, heading straight for the cockpit. The preferred point of entry was the emergency door just outside the cockpit. If they entered from there then the ghouls would come running down a narrow corridor toward them. This wasn't a really smart idea when going against men with close-quarters oriented, rapid-fire weapons. It would be a lot simpler to simply break into the cockpit through the front windshield and bypass the ghouls completely, but there were a number of things that could go wrong with that method though, like the magi and augments exchanging fire from opposite sides of the glass and causing one of them to fall, not to mention the possibility of random gunfire hitting the plane's controls. The best method would be to send men both ways, but keep the man near the windshield to serve as a spotter and distraction if need be.

The ghouls began to get lively when they heard the black armored figures moving across the roof of the plane. They began clawing and biting at the windows in a crazed haze. In response, Sigma 3 of the squad leaned over the side and aimed a stock-less MP5 at the ghoul pressing its face into the window in front of him, adjusting the gun's settings to fire in 3-shot bursts.

_BANG BANG BANG!_

xxXxx

Natalia jumped up in alarm at the sound of weapons fire. She immediately had her shotgun in hand, feeling her prana pumping throughout her body. Someone was boarding this plane, and whoever they were, they were armed with guns just like she was, which ruled out the Magus Association and Holy Church immediately. Still, she knew that for whatever reason they were here, it wasn't just to shoot a few ghouls. Chances are that they were after her specifically.

She backed herself up against the side of the door leading to the cockpit. She pumped her shotgun once, as a form of silent reinforcement to her will to live, and tensed for a fight. She was fully ready for whatever would come to get her.

xxXxx

The augments worked their way up to the cockpit, largely ignoring the disturbing sounds the ghouls were making as they tried to get at them through the glass. When you were a super human encased in thick armor, you tended to be a lot less threatened by things that normally scared a person. Sigma Actual, squad leader of Sigma team was the first to reach the emergency door. Since he couldn't open it from the outside, and both his hands were occupied at the moment...

_THWACK! _

_THWACK! _

_THWACK!_

The door bent and warped with every hard knee he delivered to the door. By now, the door was bent inward, and by the looks of it, the ghouls were swarming against the door at the sight and sound of the activity. Their minds didn't once process that anything capable of breaking down a metal door on a plane thousands of miles in the air may be more dangerous than they were. Sigma 1 figured that one more knee and the door would be completely unhinged.

He'd probably be dog-piled in midair by rabid ghouls as well, seeing the number of hungry faces and hands trying to squeeze through the openings made in the corners of the door.

Deciding that he was smarter than that, he shifted himself by using the magnetic clamp on his left hand so that he was just above the warped door, rather than right next to it. Now that he was clear of anything or anyone that may fall out, he swung his foot down and booted the door off its hinges. Quickly he pulled his leg back and safely over the door so that he wouldn't be grabbed and pulled down.

And just as expected, dozens of ghouls started jumping out the plane in an attempt to attack whoever had dislodged the door. They were left plummeting in midair toward the ocean as punishment for their lack of survival instincts. The augments didn't know whether to be more disturbed at the fact that dozens of human-esque creatures were leaping off a flying plane, or at the fact that an entire swarm's worth of bees of all things was flying out as well. Both of the things were harmless to the PWCD special operatives at this point, but it was still disturbing to see it happening.

Once all the creatures had finally jumped off the plane and doomed themselves to die on a high impact landing, Sigma finally lowered himself into the door. He made sure that his Glock 19 with a drum magazine was tracking back and forth. There were still a few bees lingering around, but they didn't possess any significant threat. The augment was in a fully sealed suit that could stop bullets. Bee stings wouldn't be an issue. He was curious about what the bees had to do with the ghouls however.

Sigma 2 and 4 came in behind their squad leader, an Uzi and an FN P90 respectively in their hands.

A single ghoul leapt up from its seat, apparently having avoided being caught up in the stampede for the door somehow. It had just enough time to open its mouth and make a noise when the three augments finally noticed it. In the next split second, three fully automatic weapons were trained on the cannibal at once.

xxXxx

Natalia clenched her gun tightly as she heard the gunfire of three completely different weapons go off at once. By the sound of it, they were all different models as well. She recognized the sound of an Uzi anywhere, seeing as it was a rather famous weapon amongst mobsters and gangs. She had used quite a few herself.

The other 2 weapons were unrecognizable to her though. She also wasn't sure, but none of those sounded even remotely similar to the burst of fire she had initially heard. If she had to make a comparison, it sounded like an MP5, but the gunshots were too far away to tell for sure.

However those last three were right outside her door, and their footsteps sounded far too heavy to even be human. She figured there were at least 3 men out there, and she would get maybe a single shot off when they got inside. She used her prana to strengthen her arms and legs. In a single burst of prana energy, she'd leap out and try to kill as many of them as she could.

She stepped back from the door and leveled her shotgun, ready to cap the first thing that came through.

xxXxx

Sigma 3 had gone around by the order of his squad leader.

The augment used the magnet on his hand to shift himself to being just beside the windshield. He was positioned well enough that all he had to do was bend his head to see inside, but he in turn wouldn't be seen from the inside. The augment quickly jerked his head out and back in.

He cursed at what he saw.

There was a strange, greyish haired woman who had a shotgun aimed at the door. He quickly radioed in his squad mates so that one of them didn't get a load of buckshot to the face. Their armor was effectively bulletproof, but that still didn't make getting hit by a shotgun at point-blank range a good idea.

"Heads up Sigma Actual." The augment warned, taking another peak at the woman. "That magi is at the door with a pump-action 12 gauge in her hands. She hasn't spotted me and I can put a few rounds in her from here."

"Negative Sigma 3. We need her alive. Besides, I got an idea."

On the other side of the door from the magi, Sigma Actual lightly tapped across the walls next to the door while his squad mates watched in confusion. When they questioned him over the COM as to what he was doing, he told them to pipe down and watch. Sigma 1 then settled against a single part of the wall that he found was making a different noise than the rest of the wall sections that he tapped.

"Sigma 3, watch closely. If I miss or I don't knock her out, do something to distract her. Sigma 2 and 4, storm the room immediately after I give the signal."

"What's the signal?" Sigma 2 asked as he and Sigma 4 moved up on either side of the door.

"You'll know." Sigma Actual responded.

Sigma 1 experimentally pressed his palm against the wall, and nodded in approval when he felt it slightly give. Then without warning, the augment made a fist and cocked his arm back as far as it would go.

xxXxx

Natalia felt the tension build up within her as she listened to the 3 men moving around outside the door, their heavy footfalls making it seem like they were all wearing bomb suits or something. She pressed herself against the side of the wall next to the door so that if they came in shooting, she would be a harder target to hit.

Wait. What was that tapping on the other side of the wall?

_**THWACK!**_

The Russian woman was sent flying backward in a heap as a fist slammed into the side of her skull, _through_ a wall. She landed sprawled over her seat, with the side of her head bleeding and her shotgun clattering out of her hands. She wasn't immediately knocked out at the impact. The last thing she saw before fading into unconsciousness was a pair of armored behemoths barge their way into the cockpit with their weapons aimed at her head.

Well if she lived through this, this giant mess would definitely make for an interesting story to tell at a later date.

xxXxx

"Good work Sigma. Secure her and return to the N'jal."

"What about the plane Sigma Actual?"

"The N'jal is gonna shoot it down once we're clear, Sigma 4. Now let's go. We're already pushing our approved operation time."

"Roger Sigma Actual. We're checking out."


	12. The Patriots

**The Patriots**

The evolution of human warfare is a long and interesting history. Slowly and gradually, the methods of warfare, along with the tactics and thinking behind them, evolved alongside technology. Wooden spears and axes were among the very first weapons of war that humans invented. Then, to counter spears and axes, bows and arrows were created, along with wooden shields. Then to counter those, metal weapons were invented. To counter metal weapons, metal armor was invented, which gave way to the invention of metal tipped arrows and hammers to breach or bypass that armor. Then catapults were invented to bypass any close ranged fighting entirely. After catapults, cannons replaced them. Then finally guns came into existence, which made all forms of heavy close ranged combat based warfare obsolete. Then soon, further weapons and armor were created to counter or bypass the threat that guns presented.

This cycle of constant evolution in weapons was not immediate or even apparently noticeable to the world. Every couple of years, someone in the world found a noticeable flaw in the way war was currently being fought, and either improved it or found a way to exploit it. In response, someone else in the world would either counter that very invention with one of their own, or build on top of it. And just like the weapons, the methods of thinking and fighting adapted with them. The age of chivalry was dead because fighting in close quarters was the only method through which a soldier could fight, and that method died once heavy ordnance and powerful ranged weapons became commonplace. Anyone who tried to follow obsolete methods of warfarewas quickly conquered, annexed, and forcibly brought into the modern era of fighting. Through this practice, warfare never became stagnant and was constantly evolving.

The issue lied in the fact that no matter how immorally destructive or hazardous to Earth that warfare became, it would still continue to advance all the same. Biochemical and nuclear warfare was all the proof one needed to ascertain that as a fact.

xxXxx

* * *

An entire decade of planning was finally bearing fruit. 5 years of rigorous training was finally paying off. The combined efforts of hundreds of men and women were finally bringing forth results.

The Crysis project had reached completion.

Inside a secret U.S. military facility within Nevada, history was being made. Dozens of scientists and analysis experts were watching 3 men being enveloped in an exoskeleton. Everyone was silently marveling as the exoskeleton part of the armor closed in around the three men and tightened snugly against their bodies. Following the exoskeleton were attachable plates of hexagonal patterned armor. Mechanical arms attached to the ceiling came down, holding individual plates of nanobots that were compacted into a formation that resembled plated armor. Those plates of armor were fitted inside every single crevice and opening the exoskeleton left. By the time the arms retracted, the three men's heads were the only part of their bodies not completely engulfed in armor. Finally, individual helmets were lowered down by two mechanical arms per person. With a single clasp of air, the helmets sealed off any external atmosphere from the outside world, making the wearers reliant on the air cleaning units installed within the helmets themselves.

The U.S. had long since been invested in this project.

The selection of who they chose to wear these 8.4 million dollar suits of armor wasn't random or carelessly chosen by any extent. The best of the best men that the U.S. had to offer were screened. Navy SEALs, Delta Force Commandos, Green Berets, Rangers, Marine Special Operations, Special Operations Group, and so on; every single elite ground based unit had their members screened and weighed against each other for temperance, mission completion rates, loyalty, experience, and mental fortitude. After all, they were entrusting those men with power armor suits that cost a little over half the price required to build a jet fighter. Not only that, but they expected those men with these suits to go into combat with monsters and abhumans. Obviously only the most tried and tested soldiers available could be trusted with such a foreboding and dangerous task.

In the end, the top members of the SOG, SEAL, and MSO had been chosen to operate the nanosuits. With such varying operation methods, the three man unit had an extremely large skill set to go off of. The Crysis suits were expected to function under any sort of operation parameters, to be able to adapt to any combat situation, and ultimately be the 'All or Nothing' unit of the United States.

The actual capabilities of the armor made this assessment far more grounded and logical than one would initially assume. It was common knowledge that there was no such thing as technology that made one's body physically move faster or become stronger, unless of course, that technology was physically attached and wired into the user's very nervous system. Attempting such a thing with technology was needlessly dangerous, and risky in countless ways. So rather than try to make the wearer himself better in physical ability, they made effort with which to make any movement significantly less. When the operator of a Crysis suit lifted a 2,000 pound object, to the wearer it only seemed as if they were lifting 50 pounds. It wasn't because the wearer himself had gotten stronger, but rather that the suit was alleviating most of the weight and effort to lift the required weight. Inversely, anything that weighed 1,950 pounds or below to a nanosuit operator seemed absolutely weightless. The ground covered by a single step in nanosuit armor was greatly extended because the suit added a slight jolt and extension to each step. The durability and stamina of the user greatly increased because their muscles weren't taking the full effort of every bodily movement, but actually distributing most of that effort to the armor itself. The nanosuit saw to it that every single movement was made easier, which left the wearer wasting only a fraction of the energy he normally used for a specific task.

Beyond the simple physical enhancement however, was another feature of the nanosuit. Every single fiber of the nano-plating on the armor was a fully self-functioning robot. Of course, the nanobots only had the ability to shift a single centimeter in any direction, but it was more than enough for the intended purpose. Every 100th nano-fiber in the Crysis nanosuit was designed to spot any approaching projectiles and order the others to shift toward the point of impact in response. In this way, the nanosuit would form a double layer of armor at any point where a bullet, punch, knife, or any such impact may come. Not only did this dampen any impacts against the user, but it also acted as an improvised shock absorber for when the suit operators fell from heights, as well as add more mass and force to any blow the operator would launch in close quarters fighting.

The final feature of the nanosuit was cloaking. This wasn't necessarily new, as the PWCD had been using such technology for years. It wasn't perfect technology either. It was well known that cloaking tech functioned off the possibility of bending light rays around an object rather than letting it simply strike an object head on. This was hard to reproduce as the closest anyone had gotten to bending light rays was bending microwaves, which were much slower and controllable than light rays. The PWCD had gotten around this by using some form of energy outside the electromagnetic spectrum to throw off light rays entirely. They weren't very open about how they had managed this, but at the very least agreed to apply this strange method of perfect camouflage to all the completed Crysis nanosuit armors, by their own selected staff of scientists and engineers.

With highly reactive armor, semi-augmented capabilities, perfect camouflage, and the skill and experience with which the operator himself brought to the table, every Crysis nanosuit user was a potent threat that could shatter the resolve of even the bravest enemies. Their only real disability was the fact that they were hard pressed to not overexert themselves while armored. After all, the operators of these nanosuits were soldiers who were well versed in the limitations of their bodies, and to suddenly find themselves with such excess energy when doing even the most strenuous activities left them somewhat hyperactive. They had to go through a short adjustment process so that their bodies could come to terms with the fact that their muscles weren't getting tired from the movements that typically wore them out. It was only a small issue that would be fixed once the operators actually got their boots on the ground in a real battlefield, and not in some simulation. Their chance was coming quite soon, too.

These men weren't cladding themselves in nanosuits for a simple test run.

Plenty of that had been done already. Any and all of the initially desired tests had reached a conclusive result by now. Stress tests for the armor, along with strength and endurance tests for the operators had already been carried out. Weapons handling and firing tests had been conducted to test whether or not Crysis suit operators would break their weapons accidentally, to which further training was taken to make sure the suit operators could manage handling movements and actions that required a more gentle touch. By now, it was fully obvious that any kinks in the Crysis program were ironed out. The Crysis nanosuits were now ready for war.

And now they would get their first taste of combat.

The Crysis units may have only numbered 3 men so far, but they were being armed heavily enough to completely outfit an entire squad of soldiers for combat. Each Crysis-equipped soldier was carrying a heavy machine gun as their primary weapon of choice. Since their normal choices of assault rifles and submachine guns felt like plastic toys in their hands, they felt the need to have weapons that at least had a tiny bit of weight to them. As a result, modified, man-portable versions of the 'Ma Deuce' Browning, CIS 50MG, and the venerable minigun were all being carried around by the nanosuit operators as casually as a normal man would carry around a feather. Their choices of secondary weapons were what most would consider hand-held cannons. 2 of the men had gone with high-caliber handguns; the Chiappa Rhino revolver pistol and the AF2011 double barreled pistol. Most curiously though, the squad leader of the Crysis nanosuit operators had gone with a sawed off, double barreled shotgun as his secondary armament.

Apparently the leader of the newly dubbed 'Patriot Squad' was planning to get in close to the enemy once his handheld Browning ran dry on ammo or stopped working.

xxXxx

* * *

Eight enforcers had been simply passing through the war-torn remains of Hiroshima. Through the acquisition of a private helicopter, they were going to make their way just outside of a U.S. military base and attempt to set up a bounded field that would be rigged to kill every member of the U.S. marine camp. The soldiers there had fought against magi enforcers before, and had potentially told their superiors everything. They had to be eliminated immediately. Then they would ultimately set it up so that Youkai witches took all the blame for the brutal attack. Normally the magi would never use such a blatantly open method, but the Youkai provided the perfect scapegoats to cover any of their publicly witnessed magic. After all, the witches had already made an army of murderous plants attack the Japanese population. Who's to say they couldn't do something like this as well? The monster species would likely be sent to extinction as a result of this attack, but if the magical world continued to survive as it had, then so be it.

At least that was the initial plan.

It wasn't known how anyone outside the Magus Association and Holy Church had caught wind of this mission, or if they even knew for sure who they were attacking to begin with. It wasn't known what exactly had fired the missile that took out the entire tail of their helicopter. It wasn't known what exactly the intent was for the attack. All the magi knew was that one moment they were crossing the nearly abandoned city of Hiroshima, and the next moment a guided missile struck the helicopter in the tail.

Sitting at the blown out window of an apartment building was a single Crysis nanosuit operator, who had a recently fired Javelin missile launcher resting on his shoulder. The super soldier watched through his expressionless visor as the vehicle made an uncontrollable tailspin to the ground. He noted with interest that quite a few of the occupants were falling out of the vehicle and scattering across the entire area as they landed. None of them died from the fall, as they all seemed to know some sort of magic that physically enhanced their bodies or at least cushioned their landing enough to not be life threatening. Wordlessly, he placed a single hand up to the side of his head to turn his radio on. Nanosuit helmets doubled as gas masks, but this feature made it rather difficult for the wearer to speak clearly as a result. So to fix this issue, a voice amplifier was built in to either talk out loud or only to people over a communications link.

**"This is Patriot Actual to Joint Special Operations Command. The target vehicle has been shot down, but most if not all of the occupants survived the landing safely. How do we proceed?"**

"JSOC here. Find and neutralize all of those Magus operatives, Patriot team. You heard the intel. The PWCD reports that they're planning mass murder and genocide on the U.S. armed forces stationed in Japan, and possibly the Chinese garrisons as well by paranormal means. The PWCD already has operatives in place to intercept them, but we're the first line of defense. Those magi can't be allowed to escape and complete their mission. JSOC out."

"**Roger JSOC."** The Crysis suit operator changed frequencies, linking to his fellow squad mates.**"Patriot team, a force of 8 abhumans classified as magi have been scattered across the vicinity, all of them within a half-click distance of the crash site."**

"**Copy Patriot Actual. Does JSOC want prisoners?"** One of the other Crysis nanosuit operators questioned from the other side of the link.

**"Negative Patriot 3. The magi are a significant threat to all the armed forces in Japan so long as they're alive. Hunt them. Kill them."**

xxXxx

* * *

When the Vatican made a military alliance with the PWCD, they had a number of things to discuss and organize. The major concern was that they were under a ceasefire with the Magus Association, who the PWCD and the UN had both secretly declared as enemies. While the UN was unaware of the true power that the Vatican had over the world, the PWCD was made fully aware and sworn to secrecy from the UN. This wasn't because the Church doubted the UN's ability to digest the information, but because the Vatican saw a great chance to feed vital information from the Magi to the UN, PWCD, and the rest of world's militaries about the Magus Association's activities. Under the conditions of the ceasefire, the magi had to inform the Church of any extremely major movements they took so as not to disrupt the Church's own dealings and operations. This also worked in reverse, however the Vatican didn't have to fear any potential allies or outside support that the Magus Association may have.

So they came up with an ingenious system. The Vatican took note of every major location, personnel, entities, movements, and other high value information of the Magus Association that they could possibly get without letting it slip that they were distributing magical information to non-magical humans, especially the PWCD of all entities. The PWCD would then distribute this information to individual countries, or the entire UN if need be, claiming that they had gotten the information from their own agents. The PWCD was lying to their superior body about the methods through which they acquired valuable information, and the Vatican was lying to both the Magi and humanity in general, which made being discovered less than ideal for either of them.

The Magus Association of course knew that their information was being leaked somehow, but couldn't figure out how. They made absolutely sure that the PWCD and their spies were nowhere near them when they moved, yet the PWCD was repeatedly distributing information that was steadily unearthing them. All the while, the Magus Association could do little in response without attracting the full militaristic attention of the entire human population on Earth.

Most magi may think themselves above normal people, but even they weren't so foolish to think that they could handle a dedicated military attack with any amount of magic. All while they were frantically combing their organization for spies and hidden technological devices, they were still conforming to the ceasefire agreements they had with the Church, never once thinking that the closest thing they had to an ally was freely handing out their information to the PWCD.

And now that information trafficking was being put to great use.

The best part about the arrangement was that it wouldn't matter all that much if the Magus Association did realize that the Vatican was passing along their information to the PWCD. What would the Magi try to do in response, break off the ceasefire? Doing that would put the Magi in a place where they had to fight the Holy Church, PWCD, and potentially the United Nations as well. And that war would be highly disastrous to the Magi, as the Holy Church only knew the general areas and locations of the Magus Association's bases because a lot of it was common knowledge to those of the magical world, in addition to some of the deeper knowledge that the Church had unearthed. However, if the PWCD started to actively hunt down and flush out Magi from the general human population, the information that the Church was supplying gave them more than enough info with which to carry such a campaign out. The moment that the PWCD found themselves undermanned or in over their heads, the United Nation's coalition army and the steadily growing drone army would be on the call to attack.

If things escalated to that point however, then World War 3 would have officially begun.

Despite what many thought, no one was actually eager to get into another war, especially so soon after the massacre in Japan. The magi wanted to keep the practice of Thaumaturgy alive and well, which would be impossible to ever achieve if they ever got into a war of any sort with the modern world. The PWCD had just come out of the war in Japan with heavy casualties and losses across the board, including the loss of most of their Bunker and Terminator suits, and wasn't too eager for another large scale conflict. The Holy Church was primarily against the Dead Apostles, and while they would have liked to see the Magus Association fall, the amount of blood that would need to be spilled for that to happen was uncomfortable for even the most bloodthirsty executioners to think about.

So until the time came that war was officially declared, everyone was content with the current system of espionage going on between 4 different parties.

xxXxx

* * *

Barius Olva was fairly normal for an enforcer. He had been at the job for 5 and a half years. In that time, he had helped out on a few dozen dead apostle hunts and helped to kill or capture a few sealing designates. His magecraft was nothing groundbreaking or amazing. He simply happened to know how to use the right tricks at the right time. He hadn't done anything extraordinary, yet found himself on such an important mission that the fate of all the magical world potentially rested on the actions of him and his group now.

As his reinforced form climbed out of the wreckage of the helicopter, he felt that this assignment was already getting far out of hand. Something had shot down his team's only ride and scattered them across the city. What was worse, two of their team had died in the crash, them not having any mysteries that granted invulnerability to blunt force and impact caused damage. There were five other still living members of his team that were certainly alive, but he didn't have the slightest clue where they were. They had all fallen out the vehicle when the helicopter started going into a tailspin.

No wonder magi hated technology so much if this was something to be expected when flying through a city.

_Crack!_

Barius thought nothing of the sound. He was next to a recently crashed helicopter that had hit God knows how many random objects while throwing pieces and debris everywhere. He'd be surprised if something didn't spontaneously collapse near him.

"GAAAAAAGHCK!"

A metal hand came literally out of nowhere. With the gentleness of a grizzly bear, the hand clamped around his jaw and crushed the offending bone structure with little more than a nice squeeze. The pain was so immediate that he couldn't even scream. Screaming would've been extremely agonizing regardless, as his jaw was completely broken. A split second later, another metal hand wrapped around the back of his head, fracturing the skull at the points where the gauntleted fingers pressed. When the metal hands brutally twisted Barius' head to break his neck, his head was completely twisted backward to face the glaring helmet of an armored monster, the skin around the Magi's neck breaking and tearing after being stretched much farther than it was meant to go.

The body collapsed to the ground, blood and spittle flying out of his mouth, as well as pouring out of the flesh tears on his neck. The Crysis suit operator was only slightly thrown off at how much he had mangled the enemy combatant when trying to execute a simple neck snap. Ignoring the mangled body before him, he radioed in his squad, informing them of the current tally.

"**Target down."**

The super soldier then turned to glance at the wreckage of the helicopter. The belly of the vehicle was gutted wide open, revealing the mangled corpse of another magus enforcer who had died in the crash. The cockpit of the vehicle itself was busted in, revealing the torn and shredded body of the pilot. It was another magus who had tried to reinforce his clothing to survive the impact. When he crashed, the glass must've blown inward and cut up his unprotected face, as well as imbedding pieces of glass in his windpipe and neck arteries. When he was knocked unconscious by the crash, he silently bled out in his seat and died while he was out cold. Or at least that's what had seemed to happen. The nanosuit operator would go over there to check for a pulse just in case, or maybe just give the body a good punch to the head. Helicopter crashes were usually a lot worse than this, especially when they were actually shot down. It spoke volumes about how 'powered up' these Magi were, if so many of them could so easily survive a crash like this.

"**Be advised Patriot team, 2 magi have died in the crash. There are 5 still magus operatives functioning within the city."**

xxXxx

* * *

Seras was not a happy woman.

As she looked around, she found herself in the local park of Hiroshima. The forested area looked extremely dead. The soil was ruined by a combination of the monstrous plants that had torn themselves from the ground and high explosives that had saturated the general area. Then outside the park were a few buildings that were sporting pockmarks, explosive residue, and general structural damage all around.

If she thought Japan was an ugly country before, then she couldn't even think up a name for it now.

But she wasn't unhappy for the looks of the area. She was unhappy because her mission which would bring her fame and glory in the magical world had just been sabotaged before it could truly even begin. Now her team was scattered across the city and probably being attacked by whatever had shot them down. That left her with the thankless task of trying to round up all the still living enforcers, burn the evidence of their presence here, burn the bodies of their fallen, and kill whatever had shot them down before escaping.

With an annoyed sigh, she flipped back her brown bangs in order to reach her magic crystal ear piece, calling up the other members of the enforcers who were wearing them.

"All enforcers, call in. Let me know that you're still alive." She irritably stated.

"It's me, Avarion. I'm still breathin'."

"Cowl here. What's up?"

She waited for a moment. Then she realized that no one else was answering but those two.

"What, it's just you two!?" She yelped.

This was bad. There had been eight of them that had come. The amount of prana that was needed to make a volatile bounded field that could kill entire armies needed at least four people fueling it, and those four all needed to know exactly what they were doing. That was the predominant reason that the team had been so large. Four would be needed to set up fields on their end, and one more to watch over every magus as they finished their preparations. Even if there were just the four of them, the mission was still doable, but now extremely difficult. With just three men, the task was nearly impossible.

"It may not be all bad Seras." Cowl stated from his end of the line. "It's possible that the other enforcers just lost their ear pieces in the fall or the crash. Either way, there's a good chance we aren't alone."

"I agree with Cowl, Seras. We should at least try-_**BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!**_"

Seras flinched in shock at the sound. Her eyes widened as she realized she had heard gunfire, and it was apparently pretty close by to wherever Avarion was. The idea of hearing loud gunfire mid-conversation was so surprising to her that she didn't realize the obvious earlier. Then she paused as she noticed what she was hearing, or rather _wasn't_ hearing.

Any noise whatsoever.

"Avarion? Avarion! Answer me dammit!"

"What the hell was that?" Cowl stated, slightly unnerved by what had just happened.

"*_**CRUNCH!**_*"

Avarion's line went dead.

xxXxx

* * *

Patriot 1 stood over the blasted apart corpse that used to be a magus enforcer, holding a strange crystallized object in his hand.

The poor guy didn't have a chance. He had seemed to have his reinforcement magic up, but when the bullets started coming that amounted to little. .50 caliber bullets tended to rip apart their targets with a single hit. The Magi had just so happened to catch a full four round burst to the chest, courtesy of a hand held 'Ma Deuce' Browning. Frankly, the nanosuit operator was surprised that there was even a torso left.

Voices were coming out of the crystal-like device as if it was a head piece or something similar, but there were no wires or such for that to be possible. Regardless, it was transmitting, which meant that it could potentially be used for tracking purposes.

Without any apparent worry or care, the Crysis nanosuit operator squeezed the thing within his palm and felt the object turn to powder beneath his armored grip.

Shaking off the bits of crystal dust on his hand, he reached up to touch the side of his helmet and radio his squad.

"**Patriot team, there are a total of four Magus operatives still functioning throughout Hiroshima. Flush them out and eliminate them."**


	13. Kill On Sight

**Kill On Sight**

"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons" -Herodotus

"The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy." -Fredrick Nietzsche

"The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." -Douglas MacArthur

xxXxx

* * *

Marshall Zelretch, otherwise known as kaleidoscope, was an insatiable individual.

He had seen many worlds, with many, _many_, alternate universes. These worlds were such great sources of knowledge and information that the dimension traveler soon grew an unquenchable thirst and curiosity for knowledge. He had seen worlds that differed tremendously from his own, because of the smallest changes in history. Many of these differences were brought about due to minor events that were thought to be inconsequential, such as a single person arriving 1.3 seconds late to a location. Such instances were always deeply intriguing to the powerful magus.

He had seen a several dimensions where Gaia had been opposed and defeated by spirits who could use a strange energy called 'reiatsu'. With the absence of Gaia, those spirits took to stabilizing all the imbalances that resulted from the being's death, such as spirits turning into carnivorous entities called hollows. Those spirits who could fully enact spiritual powers were called shinigami, and they dedicated themselves to keeping balance in the world.

He had seen dozens of dimensions where humanity hadn't been the only sentient species to walk the earth. Dozens of other species of creatures who called themselves 'youkai' had lived in humanity's shadow. There were even a handful of alternate realities where the youkai had actually succeeded in their first attempt to defeat the human species. They weren't particularly fun to visit.

Then there were dimensions where people had discovered how to use and manipulate prana. These dimensions were, of course, where he had originated. A few of these dimensions resulted in the Magus Association and Holy Church forming. A few resulted in magi being a common and accepted part of human society. The different continuums of reality varied tremendously.

But there was one dimension that had grabbed hold of Zelretch's curiosity tightly.

There was a single dimension where spirits had seized only a tiny speck of control of the world (Japan) from Gaia, the youkai species lived, and the ability to manipulate prana had all come into existence all at once. Zelretch could only watch in fascination as all of these things did their best to avoid interacting with one another. All the while, the normal human species was surrounded by these beings, being intentionally hunted and caught in the crossfire of minor non-human conflicts.

This one dimension had so firmly held Zelretch's attention because it also happened to be one of the dimensions where the resident human population had finally lost its tolerance for being subjected to non-human entities and powers. At first there had only been a handful of human organizations that had formed, such as the Holy Church and PWCD. Those organizations sought to combat the threat to humanity that the youkai, dead apostles, heretical magi, and carnivorous hollows had all presented. When a single attack occurred, which revealed the existence of all these creatures to the entire human population, mass retaliation didn't even begin to describe what the humans had started planning to do. The sorcerer watched with interest as technological weapons and equipment were developed to a level where seemingly ordinary humans were matching the worst that the non-human and ab-human entities had to offer.

However, he had seen enough dimensions and series of events to know what would inevitably result.

The spirits who watched over Japan were steadily being forced out of the living world by human sub-divisions of monster hunters. The youkai were being harrowed by angry humans to a degree where they may very well have to fight for their own survival. The Magus Association was being encroached on by the PWCD, while the Church instigated further conflict between the two powers by feeding the PWCD information from the Magus Association. The dead apostles were now in a position where they were being hunted by the Vatican, Magus Association, and the PWCD all at once. Finally, a new power had unveiled itself in the hollow world, called the Quincy. They were currently being harassed by an abomination created from the melding of a hollow and a PWCD commando, which prevented them from launching any notable invasions on anyone or anything so long as the so called "Meta" persisted in its attacks. And at the heart of it all, the human nations of the world were all gearing up for potential war against everything that wasn't human. Given that their definitions of 'not human' were getting increasingly vague, Zelretch had to wonder if even the PWCD's own super soldiers would be completely safe.

Something was eventually going to give.

Be it a single attack that went too far, a single misunderstanding, or some other precursor, something was going to happen that would trigger all of these powers into going into a state of total war. Zelretch knew what would happen if tensions and conflicts didn't wind down. Of all the species that would potentially go to war, the humans had the necessary weapons with which to destroy the entire planet, which would ensure that everyone died, regardless of their powers to stave off death. If steps weren't taken to ensure that war never came, or at least that a winner could be decided without the promise of mutually assured destruction, then everyone would die on the planet.

Of course, this was all too big for him to handle. If there was just a single organization that was causing all of this unrest to happen, then the situation could easily be resolved. He could simply tell the one in charge to stop all the fighting, and show them one of the many dimensions where nuclear warfare was used to destroy the surface of the Earth as proof of what would result. In this instance however, the entire United Nations council, as well as the rest of the militant groups of humanity, were squaring off against whoever they considered as not being human. To stop a conflict, he'd have to try and reason with every individual group to not go to war with each other, and given all of the varying ways those groups clashed, both in mindsets and goals, that was completely impossible.

In a decision that was rare for Zelretch, he threw up his hands and decided that this situation was far too volatile to fix. He'd return to his somewhat more stable home dimension, and continue to look out for it. There was nothing he could do to help here.

xxXxx

* * *

Seras was in a slightly more improved mood than she was before. On the upside, she had managed to meet up with Cowl in a nearby restaurant that had seemingly had an explosive blow the place wide open. It was the best place for them to meet as they were both able to spot the ruined building from their current locations. However, that also made an easy point from which someone could spot them.

Considering that they were already being hunted by someone however, she felt that it was better they rally together before all else, lest they be picked off one-by-one.

From there, she had been able to locate 1 of the other missing enforcers of their group. Alabaster, a magus with a tremendous skill in water manipulation, had landed in a nearby courtyard. He was a middle aged man with perfectly black hair. It was by sheer luck that they had managed to get to him in time, because they were first alerted to his position by the sounds of gunfire. Using a nearby puddle, the magus sealed himself in a barrier of ice that was too thick for anything short of a B-rank attack to penetrate in one hit. Some attacker with an absurdly powerful rapid-fire gun was firing down on the ice barrier from the roof of a building. The shooter was using some sort of ability to become imperfectly invisible, which looked like they had become transparent. It must've been a magus, as no technology that she knew of could possibly do that.

Upon spotting the two magi coming to reinforce their pinned down ally, the shooter retreated.

Seras knew that this wasn't a simple coincidence. First the helicopter had been shot down. Then members of the team of 8 almost completely stopped reporting in, save for two people. Of those two people, one of them was killed mid-conversation. Not only were these people hunting them, but they were doing it a scarily fast pace. They had only crashed a couple minutes ago, and already most of her team was dead or currently being attacked. She couldn't possibly predict when they'd be attacked next, how many attackers there were, and most importantly, she didn't know what exactly she was up against. This type of situation was a nightmare for anyone in her line of work.

Regardless, with Alabaster and Cowl covering her back, she was at least content that they'd be able to fight off an attack if they remained vigilant.

xxXxx

* * *

"**Patriot 3 to Patriot Actual, we have three magus enforcers in the courtyard of Nameshi hospital. Requesting assistance." **

From the 3rd story window of the building next to the hospital, a single nanosuit operator watched. Armed with a minigun as a handheld weapon, the Crysis suit wearer felt confident that if he started firing down at the targets, they wouldn't survive. Unlike last time, they wouldn't know that he was there before he started shooting. With no prior warning to the threat of being shot, these magi were going to get mulched in a surprise hail of fire. However, he wasn't sure about that. They may have some sort of ability to resist bullets, and if that was the case, then the super soldier wanted some support from his squad mates.

"**This is Patriot Actual. What are their capabilities?"** The squad leader said from the other side of the COM link.

"**As far as I've seen, they can create ice barriers. In addition to our earlier Intel of them having skin hardening and enhancement abilities, they won't go down without a fight."** The nanosuit operator continued to watch the trio of magi.

"**Patriot 2 is currently tailing the only other still living magus operative. We'll just have to put them down ourselves."**

"**I'm in position to fire now. Just give me your mark."**

"**Roger Patriot 3. Moving into position."**

xxXxx

* * *

Seras silently ordered everyone to ready themselves for combat.

Their hunters were clearly watching them right now and simply waiting for an appropriate time to attack. They hadn't moved from the exact spot that they had found Alabaster yet, as they knew they'd only be ambushed somewhere else otherwise. Here, they had a chance to learn the terrain, knew at least one potential direction and method of attack their enemies would use, and could make any final preparations without fear of walking into a trap that had been placed elsewhere.

She didn't exactly know what Alabaster's and Cowl's abilities were. Magi never shared the secrets to their abilities and techniques if they could help it, though they wouldn't mind boasting the end results if they were confident that the methods to their abilities couldn't be gleamed on sight. It was only because of that, that she even knew that one was a water manipulator and the other a close-quarters specialist. She frowned, realizing that out of everyone here, Cowl was at the largest disadvantage. She and Alabaster had ranged abilities to counter being shot at. Cowl on the other hand, needed to get close to an enemy to do anything. Seeing as these enemies could turn invisible and were using firearms, they probably weren't going to give him the chance to get close.

She cursed the situation. Magi were idiots for dismissing firearms as a threat. Sure, there were plenty of magical attacks that were much more powerful than any bullet could be, but bullets were often too fast for anyone without serious body enhancements to dodge. In addition, most magi only made counters for other magic abilities rather than bullets, which generally left them out of luck when someone pulled a gun on them. And that was assuming the magi in question had any abilities at all with combat in mind.

Luckily for her, enforcers tended to not overlook basic protections over major ones.

She gave her surroundings a good look, noting that Cowl and Alabaster were doing the same. They were standing in the middle of a very grassy courtyard, a 3 story hospital to their back, a 5 story office building to their left, and a shopping plaza extending across both their front and right sides across the street. Then there were several cars that had either swerved off the road or been parked on the side of the street. The woman couldn't help but notice that she hadn't heard any noises from the office building after one of their apparent hunters had retreated. That could mean two things for her. The first was that the attacker had been able to leave the building without making any noise, which said that he or she was very good at moving quietly. The second was that the attacker was still there, and simply waiting for them to make a move.

Neither option had good implications.

xxXxx

* * *

"**Engage"**

xxXxx

* * *

_-zzzzzzzzzZZZ!_

The 3 enforcers of the magus association jumped at the sound of the churning noise, pivoting to face the 3rd story window of the office building. Alabaster immediately covered the trio in a solid dome of ice, recognizing the sound immediately. Seras didn't even blink as her vision of the building was obscured by a sudden wall of ice. What had grabbed her focus was the unconcealed image of the attacker once he stepped into plain view of the window, with no cloaking whatsoever to hide his image.

She feasted her eyes on one of the most advanced and dangerous suits of armor she had ever seen. It looked as if it was a massive gray, white, and black human body with all its skin gone. Layers of octagonal armor were shaped to look like actual muscles, while a white and exoskeleton like contraption seemed to function as the skeleton of the suit; holding everything in place. The head of the attacker was covered in an odd helmet with a red opaque visor. She also noted that the man in the suit was holding a spooled up minigun as easily as if it was a plastic toy.

**BZZZZZZZZZZZT!**

The minigun was a beautiful weapon when put to use. The average rate of fire for one at its lowest was 2,000 rounds per minute, and 6,000 at its highest. This also translated into a minigun firing anywhere between 33 to 100 rounds a second. The weapon was versatile, as it was sheer overkill for dealing with infantry, and very usable for anti-armor purposes. Even if the rounds themselves lacked penetrating power, the sheer number of them would simply grind away at armor like it was acid.

Ice was no exception.

Alabaster was sweating with exertion as he tried to maintain his ice barrier. The onslaught of bullets was grinding away the ice nearly as fast as he could replace it. The constant use of prana energy was taxing his reserves. However, he didn't dare drop his guard less he be turned into a smear by the devastatingly powerful weapon.

**BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!**

Alabaster's breath hitched as he felt his ice barrier being hit from two sides. Unlike the shots from the office building, where the bullets were digging into his ice shield in fast repetition, these bullets weren't nearly as frequent, but were nearly punching through the ice shield completely with every impact. The holes refilled immediately with ice, only for a new hole to get blown into the ice a moment later. This had the effect of forcing the magi to split attention between the minigun and .50 Ma Deuce Browning's sides of damage.

Seras wheeled around at the sound of not one, but two heavy weapons firing. She immediately blanched.

There were two of them, and this one seemed to have a slightly more elongated and heavy duty weapon.

"Alabaster!" Seras barked. She knew that if they stayed still like this, Alabaster would eventually run out of prana reserves and they'd all be ingloriously gunned down.

"_What!_" The black haired magus yelled, clearly far from happy.

"Drop the shield from the back! I'll take on the thing that's attacking us from behind! You and Cowl handle the one up in the building." She ordered.

Without giving a response, the water manipulator stopped reinforcing the rear end of the barrier, allowing the .50 caliber rounds to start blowing holes into the rear of the barrier. Not wasting a beat, Seras summoned a magical barrier in front of her, before launching it straight forward like a projectile. It smashed aside the remains of the ice in front of it, also halting any bullets that impacted it.

The metal man seemed surprised by the move, as he suddenly stopped firing his gun to marvel at the strange purple thing coming towards him. Realizing what he was doing, he 'hopped' or more accurately 'leapt' to the side and avoided the strange attack. Before he could even realize that he was now experiencing returning fire, he saw the woman of the group levitate a single piece of rock off the ground. Then the rock suddenly accelerated toward him at the speed of a bullet!

_plink! _

Seras frowned when she saw her earth bullet do absolutely no damage. She frowned even deeper when she realized that the skin of the metal creature had actually overlapped on itself to stop the bullet. It was a cheap and efficient method of attack. Pick up a tiny piece of rock and launch it as fast as a bullet. Such a simple trick that had killed countless numbers of her enemies. She barely even registered that one shot in her prana levels. However she did notice that the suit flinched from the impact, which let her know that the weak attack would at least do _something_. So she decided that if one didn't cause any damage, fifty or so might.

Patriot 1 flinched at the first impact on his chest. The nanosuit read the incoming projectile, and shifted slightly to form a triple layer of armor over the centimeter-small estimated point of impact. It wasn't necessary anyway, as even the weakest point in the Crysis armor could stop a low caliber bullet, much less a simple rock moving at the speed of a bullet. Taking a split second to marvel at the sheer ability of his armor had been a mistake on Patriot 1's part, as it allowed the hostile to make a follow up.

_plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! _

_plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! _

_plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! plink! _

The nanosuit armor looked as if it were made of water at the moment, if one could see through the rapidly accumulating dirt piling up over it. The plates rapidly shifted and sorted over one another, struggling to keep track of and intercept each and every one of the projectiles that came toward it. Luckily, when the investment was made to make nanosuits the ultimate weapons of war for the ground soldier, they didn't cut any corners at any point in the development. The inner computers within the nanobots had enough processing power and speed to keep up in the event that multiple projectiles came at once. They still struggled, but they certainly weren't failing at their job.

Neither Seras or Patriot 1 stayed perfectly still like idiots during all of this. The Crysis nanosuit user moved to cover behind a parked car, whereas Seras sprinted behind the stairs leading inside the hospital, keeping up the pressure with her earth bullets.

Irritated at how heavily he had been lit up by simple rocks, the soldier peeked over the car, bringing a fully loaded .50 Browning heavy machine gun to bear.

**BANG! BANG! BANG!**

The woman ceased firing, ducking behind the concrete staircase the moment she saw that massive gun peek over at her. The Ma Deuce Browning only reported three times, but those shots completely blew a hole in the corner of the stairs that her head had been occupying moments before. Her opponent couldn't have possibly had _that_ good of an aim! To casually draw a gun, sight a target, aim, and fire within a second and a half was nearly unreal! Not to mention that they were doing it with a gun that most men couldn't even carry, much less aim correctly!

She refused to pop her head up to get another look. If the enemy could shoot so good as to nearly take her head off on a snapshot, than he'd nail her without a doubt now that he had the time to properly aim for a downrange shot. Of course she could still fire earth bullets, she just wouldn't have a clue as to whether or not they were hitting anything. Not that those were really doing anything more than annoying the attacker. And she had more powerful abilities than simple earth bullets, but those actually took up a significant amount of prana, and she didn't want to risk making a charged attack and missing.

Alabaster and Cowl were making a push on the second metal man.

The water manipulator fired off a volley of ice bullets at the minigun wielding attacker, causing him to jump behind the wall for cover. Cowl took the lull in weapons fire to rush forward. Since his abilities were entirely close-quarters based, he'd have to close the distance on the attacker. The magi pressed himself against the side of the office building that the attacker was in, testing the door for any possible booby traps just in case. Once he was satisfied that no nasty surprises awaited him, magical or technological, he slinked into the office building and began to work his way up upstairs.

Patriot 3 cursed as he felt the ice projectiles sinking into the other side of the wall he was leaning against. Sure, his armor could probably take the impacts with ease, but why risk it? The nanosuit operator switched windows, going to one of the many on the floor that weren't currently being lit up with ice shards. Taking a moment to estimate the magus operative's general location, the Crysis operator popped out of cover, spooling his minigun before he even fully brought it to bear.

_zzzzzzzzzZZZ!_

Alabaster's eyes widened. Thinking quickly, the magi dove behind a parked red Hyundai, knowing that raising another ice shield would only put him in a bad position just like last time. Despite most magi being adverse to learning about technology, Alabaster was a special case. He actually knew a fair bit about military technology, not necessarily from studying weapons, but from simply playing video games in his childhood. Thus far, most of the games he played implied that whenever you shot at a car, it tended to explode. So to prevent that, he placed his hand against the car bumper and started pumping it with prana. The car seemed to shift in its position, as if it had suddenly became a few hundred pounds heavier.

**BZZZZZZZZZZZT!**

Hundreds of miniature bullets started to slam into the side of the red car in fast repetition. Sparks were flying as the bullets started to gauge deepholes and streaks into the Hyundai, causing entire chunks of the vehicle to fall off. However, the vehicle still stood firm, despite the fact that it was currently being hammered by a hail of bullets. Most vehicles were torn apart under minigun fire unless they had military grade armor. There was simply too much hot lead coming at once for any civilian car to withstand, yet this one was still in one piece.

The Crysis suit operator stopped firing, realizing that he was only wasting ammunition. What he had just witnessed should not have happened. The magus hiding behind that red Hyundai should be every bit as bullet riddled as the side of that car, while the car itself should be nothing but scrap metal, yet there they were. He felt slightly cheated, if he had to put the feeling washing over him into words.

Taking a moment to survey the field during the reprieve in shooting, he noted two things. The first was that his squad leader was having a heavily cover based firefight with another magus operative, one who he had an unobstructed view of at this position. The second thing he noticed was that of the three magi they were supposed to be fighting, only two of them could be found. One of them had either fled the area, which was unlikely considering that the other two were fighting and holding strong, or they were currently trying to flank one of them.

"**Patriot Actual, be aware. One of the magi **has**moved to ambush one of us."** The Crysis suit reported,

The operator of the suit felt his eyes widen, ducking down as a single powerful lance of ice skewered the space his form had once occupied. That probably would've punched straight through his armor, or at least put him through a wall had he stayed still. The operator made an additional statement.

"**As well, you've got a clear shot on the target behind the red Hyundai! Put him down!"**

"**Roger Patriot 3. Overlapping fields of fire should take them out."**

Snapping up from behind the heavily abused truck, Patriot 1 brought his M2 Browning to bear on the magi who was currently crouched behind a red Hyundai. At his angle, while he had cover from Patriot 3's minigun, there wasn't anything to save him this time. It was only by coincidence that the magi happened to turn around at that exact moment as well, spotting the mammoth sized gun being pointed at him.

There was a moment of clarity as the two combatants made eye-to-visor contact. Neither of the men had ever met each other. Neither had any personal reason to like or dislike the other. To both of them, this was simply a job, maybe a service even. Both knew what the full implications were for becoming what they are now. While both would regret dying in battle at all, and both might regret killing someone they had no personal reason to hate, they would willingly do so anyway. Such was the life of a soldier.

The magus enforcer moved his hands to raise another ice shield in a last ditch effort to save himself, the air dropping in temperature as the water in the air suddenly began to make a jump from air vapor to solid ice. The Crysis nanosuit operator pulled the trigger of his M2 Browning, feeling the weapon buck twice in his hands. 2 bullets exited the barrel at supersonic speeds, each round as long as a man's hand and as thick as two fingers. The shots crossed the distance 113 meters in a fraction of a second, striking true.

Alabaster's chest was blasted open as the two heavy rounds pierced the man's chest, completely ignoring the magically reinforced clothing and sturdy material of the uniform. Blood and bits of bone splattered outward as the bullets cut down the man. The powerful magus slumped against the side of the red Hyundai, his blood making a darker red on the already bright red vehicle.

Seras watched in shock as one of her allies was so easily and abruptly killed. Little did she realize that he was the lucky one. He at least was able to get a good look at his killer before exiting this world.

_zzzzzzzzzZZZ-__**BZZZZZZZZZZZT!**_

Miniguns were known for tearing cars of all shapes and sizes to shreds under any prolonged fire. In several experiments, it was proven that a minigun could cut down a fully grown tree underneath concentrated fire for several seconds. Gun experts compared watching minigun annihilate an armored car to watching a blending machine grind up ice into little shards.

The effects of such a weapon on a flesh and blood target... were better left unsaid. Seras was torn apart under the on slot.

"**On your six Patriot 3!" **The Patriot team squad leader barked in alert.

The nanobots in the back of the armor shifted en mass to condense over a large, fist-sized area. The nanobots had noticed and responded to an incoming projectile from behind and immediately moved in response. It was lucky that they did too, as the suit operator would've likely had lasting damage done to his nanosuit, if not had his back broken.

A kick with all the force of a speeding car impacted against the reinforced lower back area of the nanosuit.

Patriot 3 was sent forward against the wall, leaving a small imprint in it. Reacting immediately to the surprise attack, the suit spun around, swinging his minigun like a club. The magi behind him ducked beneath the attack and came back up with his arms in a guarded boxing stance. A swift uppercut followed. Falling back on instincts and years of close combat training, the Crysis suit operator released the minigun immediately and brought his forearms together to block the punch.

Despite the fact that he was clad in Crysis nanosuit armor and his attacker was in nothing but robes and wearing gloves, the blocked punch actually left a bit of pain in the operator's forearm. However, he did note that the nanobots in his arms had shifted and solidified at the impact point of that punch as well. The magi threw a low roundhouse kick to the knee, but was surprised when the soldier actually countered by kneeing him in the hamstring with the very leg he had tried to kick.

Patriot 3 wasn't any random soldier after all. He was one of the best members of the Special Operations Group, recruited before that from the Delta Force commandos. Of all the specialized training and combat techniques that the Special Forces were privy to and trained in, close quarters was one of the most important techniques to learn, right next to gun handling. Against someone who had possibly never been in an all-out brawl before, this magus was in for a surprise. The nanosuit he was wearing powered up every single movement the wearer himself made, which included punches, kicks, and chokes.

The magi was forced to bring his arms up to block a double hammer fist from the Crysis suit, which was always a trap move. The magi flinched at the impact, not realizing until now that his enemy would (and could) manhandle him if he wanted to. Patriot 3 then moved both his hands to grab the back of the head of the magus, right before pulling him forward into a knee to the gut.

Cowl's eyes watered as he felt a rib break from the knee to his stomach. The Crysis-wearing soldier didn't relent however. An armored elbow was slammed in between Cowl's shoulder blades, another knee driven into his chest, and finally an uppercut to the nose were all given to the magi, the last of the blows sending the attacker sprawling backward to the ground. With a bloody nose, broken rib, and finally a fractured collarbone, the magus enforcer wasn't able to immediately get off the ground.

Rather than pursue the sprawling attacker like some sort of karate movie character would, the operator simply drew his side arm and aimed it at the downed magi. The Chiappa Rhino revolver, a gun that was essentially a hand cannon. The sleek white handgun voiced itself as the Crysis suit operator depressed the trigger.

**BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!**

The rounds punched clean through all the protection and magical reinforcement in the clothing. The bullets could casually punch through Kevlar without issue. Compared to the military grade material that bomb armor was made of, the magical protection that Cowl had couldn't possibly compare. The bullets made clean holes through the body and into the floor beneath the attacker. If he hadn't died from the actual penetrations of the gunshots, than he was certainly dead from the fact there were now 4 massive bleeding holes in him. Assuming that he hadn't died from the bullets, he had long since bled out by now if the puddle was any indication.

"**Hostile eliminated."**

xxXxx

* * *

Avitus was standing out in the open, eyes peering from side to side.

He had been hunted since coming here. He didn't know where the rest of his team was, and had lost his communication stone during the fall out of the helicopter. He was only acting on a hunch, but he knew in his very soul that something was tailing him. He couldn't really call it a magical sixth sense, since he had yet to feel another magical presence as of yet. It was more like just a gut feeling at first.

Then he started to hear gunshots from nearby.

It wasn't until he arrived at the helicopter crash site that he fully realized that something really was after him and his team. The bodies of three enforcers were there. Only two of them looked like they had died from the crash. The other one looked as if _something_ had tried to twist his neck until it popped off, and only barely failed at doing so. After that discovery, something had tried to sneak up on him from behind, only to be given away when it stepped on a piece of scrap metal and made it groan beneath the weight on it.

Avitus turned around and unleashed a gout of manipulated fire on the target.

The thing dived away and went into a roll, hip-firing a _gun_ of all things at him! He was only barely able to avoid getting shot because he had understood the value of taking cover from a target. He was smart enough to know that not all guns were weak enough to be stopped by simply reinforcing clothing. That went double for guns that were almost bigger than he was.

When the thing didn't come back for a second attack, he began moving swiftly, trying to avoid his hunter. Every time however, it steered him away from running in a certain direction by shooting a couple bursts of shots at his general area. Nothing ever struck him, but he eventually realized that it wasn't because he was getting lucky. He was simply being steered in a certain direction.

Finally, he decided to stop running.

Standing in the middle of a highway, abandoned cars on all sides of him, he decided that this would either be his moment of glory or his last stand. Regardless, he wouldn't shy away from this fight, no matter what happened, or what came to fight him. He was ready.

"I'M RIGHT HERE!" Avitus bellowed, he powerful voice carrying across the sky. "COME AND GET ME!"

A trio of metal giants appeared around him, all at different vintage points, with absurdly large weapons being aimed down at him. The moment was so abrupt and shocking for the magus enforcer that he was barely able to get a word out. He suddenly realized that he was going to die if he simply stood there. Thinking quickly, the magus lit his hands on fire and attempted to make a smoke/fire screen for himself to escape-

The CIS 50MG, minigun, and M2 Browning heavy machine guns all opened fire on a single target, at the same time, all at relatively close range.

"**That's the last of them. Contact JSOC. The mission has been accomplished."**


	14. Iron and Cobalt

**Iron and Cobalt**

"_I'll be back." Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California _

xxXxx

* * *

When the PWCD was first encountering the spirit world, they were terrified at the daunting idea of routinely fighting such beings. For the ordinance they would have to bring in, it would have been more efficient to commission the United Nations to wage an all out war on the hollow world, rather than try to fight such creatures piecemeal. The equipment required to see the creatures wasn't all that much of an issue. What was however, was the fact that nothing could be done to strike back at them or attack them preemptively.

That was before they had encountered Kisuke Urahara.

The man had been an enigma to the PWCD president. He had effortless infiltrated one of the PWCD's most secure and well guarded bases across the world, which happened to be in Japan. He then began offering working technology that used some sort of energy detection frequency to determine the locations of hollows, which he called 'reiatsu radars'. This alone made the PWCD eager to do business, seeing as they were now in contact with a scientist with valuable knowledge on their enemy. It was almost too good a deal for the black ops organization. All they had to do was cover any and all of the man's purchases, as well as have him and his list of associates protected by the Paranormal Warfare Contingency and Defense's full resources. In return, the PWCD not only gained valuable detection technology, which enabled them to have a swift response to any sort of spirit based threat, but a plethora of other useful inventions. Once artificial reiatsu manipulation was enabled, the PWCD began to swiftly pump out new weapons and equipment based solely on the purpose of fighting hollows and other dangerous non-humans.

Terminator suits were one example. Scaling down and greatly altering the design of the Bunker suit, the terminator suits were born. They essentially took a full sized exoskeleton system and started welding tank grade armor all around it. While the armor greatly reduced mobility and reaction, it offered a virtual invulnerability to small arms and even to a degree against anti-armor weapons. The suits were designed to be gluttons for punishment. They could take hits that would rattle a battle tank, and keep on pressing. Unlike the rest of the PWCD, Terminator suits didn't have any stealth applications whatsoever. They were designed purely for attrition and warfare, nothing more and nothing less.

But the real reason they became feared was their weapons.

Of the many ground weapons that the PWCD had access to, the terminators had the most destructive ones as far as being infantry portable went. The RPSMG or 'Rocket Propelled Sub Machine Gun', was a massive sub machine gun-type weapon with every single round being a mini rocket in its own right. It was designed to punch through armor, or thick skin in the case of hollows, and detonate. The result was as messy as it was effective. The companion weapon to the RPSMG was the massive gauntlet that terminators called their free hand. The gauntlets in the terminator suit's free hand had built in thermal plates that briefly released microwaves on impact so that it could serve as close-combat weapon if need be. Then there was the most infamous weapon that the PWCD had ever produced: the thunder hammer. The hammerhead was built around a reiatsu battery that gathered reishi and particles of electrons and protons from the air, and abruptly discharged it all out at once on impact. The result on a living target was... disturbing to say the least.

Due to various technical issues, a terminator suit had to be specifically designed to use thunder hammers or RPSMGs and gauntlets, but not both. Suits with the RPSMG and gauntlet load out were conventional terminators. They were designed to be the tanks and bulwarks of the PWCD against heavy hitting attackers. Terminator suits with thunder hammers were coined as assault terminators, due to the fact that they were mainly useful in situations where they were attacking a threat, and almost never valuable when ordered to defend from one.

Of course, Urahara Kisuke's technology had further enhanced the assault terminators. He had seen the effectiveness of the suits, but addressed that while they were highly destructive, they were also very slow and static. Against anything stronger or faster than the common hollow or Gillian level hollow, and the terminator suits would be butchered. So he began to find ways to transfer the shinigami shunpo technique over to Terminator suits. Eventually, he found a way to do so by attaching a massive reiastu battery to backs of assault terminators, which would do the job of harnessing and focusing the reiatsu for the operators of the terminator suits. All the man inside had to do was set a desired location, and the reiatsu battery would accelerate the entire suit over to the location at a fraction of a second. Whiplash wasn't an issue, as the suit operators were always augments, and thus very capable of keeping track of their movements, even at high speeds.

Assault Terminators served a very different role from their more conventional counterparts. You sent terminators into a battle to be metaphoric immovable objects that couldn't be broken through. You sent assault terminators into battle to be an unstoppable force that broke everything in its path. Terminator units often served as the support for any sizable PWCD force. Assault terminator units often served as the spearheads of such a force.

After the battle of Karakura however, the number terminator and bunker suits were in extremely short supply. The number of still functional ones were in even shorter supply. Almost all of them had been damaged or destroyed in the fighting in Karakura to evict the massive hollow incursion. The loss of these assets had deeply hurt the PWCD's capacity to sustain another conflict against such powerful enemies like the arrancar again. As such, the PWCD higher ups were working hard to repair and replace all the damaged suits and find replacements to fill in the gaps of various terminator and assault terminator units, assuming the entire unit didn't need to be replaced entirely.

As of now, there was only a single assault terminator unit that had come back from the fighting in Karakura town without any casualties across the entire squad; Cobalt team.

xxXxx

* * *

Hollows were plagues on the world.

Hollow incursions across the world had decreased very significantly overtime. Areas that usually saw frequent hollow activity year round, were now almost completely unlikely to see the soul eaters for years to come. Without Aizen commanding Huecco Mundo, it was generally assumed by the PWCD and the United Nations that his presence was the main driving force for hollows to attack humans. After all, what else would cause the sudden drop in hollow attacks? It wasn't like the fighting in Karakura had put a dent in the hollow population. However decreased the attacks were, that didn't mean they never happened. They were just rare.

"**SOOOOOOUULS!"**

It was even rarer that abnormally large hollow incursions happened almost next door to a minor PWCD base.

Nearly 3 dozen hollows, 30 of them of the normal variety, and the other 5 of the adjuchas level, started going on a frenzy when they were released from Hueco Mundo. Since they appeared through a Gargantua over the ocean, they immediately dove into the water and started attacking fish. They had very dim levels of reiatsu in them, but it was still somewhat nourishing for the corrupted human souls. So to help sate their endless hunger, they started off by attacking fish, and working their way towards the nearest island, Hawaii. This gave the PWCD a good 2 or so hours to react before the hollows reached a human settlement. All things considered, this was plenty of time.

The local populace along the beaches were evacuated by the nearby national guard stations, doing so under the pretense of an encroaching flood that would devastate the area. Following that procedure, once every civilian was ushered off to a nearby town, the augments of the local PWCD base immediately showed up, bringing with them every type of heavy weapon they could carry. The very weakest of hollows were only barely vulnerable to bullets. Even the armor piercing variety of bullets were to hollows, as a high powered BB gun was to a human. In response, augments were carrying heavy machine guns, semi-automatic grenade launchers, and rocket launchers to the fight.

There were only three squads of augments and a pair of Apache helicopters on hand for aerial support. In addition were a few unarmed transport helicopters to move the augments to and from locations. Minor PWCD bases were only meant to monitor local areas within a set distance. It was up to the major PWCD bases to launch any offensives or counterattacks against threats to the human populace. Minor bases were simply there to defend from such threats.

But the defenders were heavily outmatched here.

"More of them pushing through! Light those fuckers up!"

The augments were being pushed to the breaking point trying to fight off the hollows. There were just too many, and it took way more than they had to adequately deal with them. Heavy machine guns rounds could only cut into the skin of tougher of the normally classed hollows, leaving only superficial damage. Missile launchers and semi-automatic grenade launchers could kill such targets fairly easily, assuming that they stood still long enough to get struck. The adjuchas hollows however, were all but invulnerable to any type of firepower that the augments could bring to bear.

"Terra squad, regroup and fall back! Hatchet squad will provide overwatch."

Ceros and ballistic rounds tore through the streets of the city, as corrupted human souls and augmented humans battled for supremacy. The augments of Terra squad made a fast paced jog down the streets, fleeing from the hollows as they had pressed the attack. The 5 man squad was doing well enough before. They had killed two of the creatures with focused fire on its skull head, and chased away another after a round from a grenade launcher blasted off a chunk of its mask. In return, a cero from the sky had vaporized one of the men with the missiles launcher. Another hollow had managed to use some sort of strange attack that allowed it to fire its fingernails as machine gun rounds. Most of the squad had been able to evade being hit by the incoming projectiles, except for one unlucky soul who took a nail right through his thigh. His leg had only been hanging on by a few strands of muscle before the squad leader made the decision to cut the leg completely off with one good chop with a knife.

Now four men, one of which was maimed with the loss of his leg, were on the retreat.

"_**ROOOOOAAAAR!"**_

Terra 1, squad leader of Terra team, looked up to the sky and grimaced. An adjuchas was flying overhead. It looked like a giant black bird with white bone armor adorning its form. It had been circling the skies for over an hour, and was the sole reason that there were no Apache helicopters helping them out. That single hollow had destroyed both the vehicles by hitting them dead center with ceros. The unarmed helicopters were forced to retreat when the hollow started coming after them as well. The only saving grace was that those Apache helicopters had taken down 2 adjuchas hollows and 5 regulars before biting the dust, making the situation somewhat survivable.

The augment squad leader of Terra team wasn't sure how many hollows were left. His squad had killed 2 and wounded another. He had seen Hatchet team drop two or three on their end, though he wasn't sure if one of those had been the very same one his team had scared off. Mallet team had completely stopped reporting in. He didn't know if they were all dead, or their was something preventing them from making contact. Either way, he was forced to assume the worst and think that it was just Terra and Hatchet left against at least 2 dozen hollows, 4 or 5 of which they didn't have any means to kill.

"Hatchet team, hold your fire and relocate somewhere to hide. We're outmatched here. Wait for reinforcements."

A symphony of monstrous bellows and barking gunfire and explosions filled the other side of the COM link.

"Easier said than done Terra! We got an adjuchas level hollow bearing down on our asses, and the best things we can hit it with our only slowing it down!" Hatchet 1 growled from his end, the sound of heavy machine gun fire barking once more.

"We've already called for reinforcements! Hang on till we get there! Then we'll stick it ought until reinforcements come!" Terra 1. Then he turned to his squad.

They looked miserable. Two of his men had their weapons slung over their shoulders while they helped carry around Terra 2, whose entire leg was gone from thigh down. Despite wrapping the stump as tightly as they possibly could, he likely wouldn't make it. There was nothing they could use to cauterize the wound except get a hollow to shoot a cero at his leg. He'd just bleed until he finally died, unless they could evacuate him somewhere to be treated within the next few hours.

**BOOOOOOM!**

Four heads whipped toward the hill at which hatchet squad had been occupying. A large smoke cloud rose up from the area, meaning that either the hollows they were fighting had just blown something up, or Hatchet squad was getting desperate and jury rigging larger explosives somehow. Either way, it showed that the fighting was quickly getting desperate.

"Hatchet squad, come in!" Terra 1 barked. He waited a full ten seconds. "Hatchet Actual, respond immediately!" No response came. The line was silent on the other end.

Damn hollows.

xxXxx

* * *

A single Njal carrier flew to Hawaii. In the bowels of the great war machine, four massive forms stood in wait, armed with massive hammers that glowed neon blue at the tip. Their helmets were somewhat similar to that of a rhino's head, only without the horn. Their eyes were opaque slits that one could only barely notice. Their armor was all black, with the letters P.W.C.D. across their right shoulder pads. Their entire appearance would intimidate even the most fearless beings on the planet. They were assault terminators. One of the greatest anti-hollow specialist units in the PWCD.

"**This is Cobalt Actual to all PWCD personnel currently on the Island of Hawaii. Cobalt team has arrived to neutralize the hollow threat."**

"..."

"**Repeat to all PWCD personnel on the island, we've come to reinforce you." **The assault terminator stated.

"...Damn, you're late to the party." A tired voice said.

"**Who am I speaking to?"**

"This is Terra actual. As far as I know, my squad are the only ones left. The hollows smashed us pretty badly. We're camped out in an abandoned marketplace, trying to save one of my men from bleeding out."

"**We copy Terra actual. Don't worry, we'll pay them back."**

"You said you're the leader of Cobalt squad? What kind of support did you bring with you?"

"**Just us."**

"Are you kidding me? Get outta here and bring back a full battalion! They ran through three squads of us, never mind the two Apache helicopters we had for support!"

"**These hollows never dealt with assault terminators before. We have additional air support trailing behind us, but don't expect them to get here before we're done."**

"Didn't you hear me dammit!?" Terra 1 barked, confused as how foolhardy this guy was being. Didn't he just hear that three squads with air support had failed to do what they were going to try to do? And not only that, but they weren't even going to fully acknowledge what they were getting into?

"**We'll be dropping in under 10 minutes. Sit tight and wait for the all clear. We'll draw the hollows away from your vicinity." **The COM link closed.

'The hell is wrong with those people?' Terra 1 thought incredulously.

xxXxx

* * *

A quartet of massive black frames fell from the sky, dropping from the underbelly of a passing Njal carrier. With so many hollows infesting the area, the pilot couldn't risk landing the plane. So instead, the terminator suits put those expensive shock absorbers in their leg armor to good use. At 50 meters in the air, it certainly wasn't a risky drop by any stretch. It was simply a matter of not falling the wrong way. The hollows barely even noticed the passing Njal carrier. They didn't acknowledge that 4 large black objects were falling from the sky, and coming in their general direction. What the hollows DID notice, was a potent amount reiatsu coming from the direction of four dots. The reiatsu energy seemed a little off to them, as if it was tasteless and artificial, but they didn't seem to care. Food was food, and an entire buffet had just showed up.

Cobalt team hit the ground hard, announcing their presence to all the hollows in the area.

"**Cobalt squad, we've been dealing with these bastards for years. You know all the tactics and maneuvers. Stay in formation, keep your guard up, and watch your squad mates' back."** The leader barked.

"**Yes sir, Cobalt actual."** The squad responded.

"_**ROOOOOAAAAR!" **_

A bestial below filled the air, followed by a slight rubble in the ground, as if the very earth was shaking rhythmically. The four armor-clad superhuman men tensed and formed a circle. Their legs were bent, their hammers were already cocked back for a swing, and the men themselves were scanning the area for any immediate attacks.

Cobalt squad was present when the PWCD had first engaged the hollows. They were present during the first encounter with the Shinigami, which officially introduced the PWCD to the Gotei 13. They were there during the worst of the fighting in the Japan massacre; killing youkai, monstrous plants, hollows, and arrancar alike. Not once had their squad ever suffered a single loss throughout their entire history, whereas entire squads of their peers had been obliterated in the very same conflicts. They were combat veterans of the highest caliber.

They welcomed any hollows to try and stop them where everything else in this universe had failed.

"**Are they coming or what? We don't have all day."** Cobalt 3 spat, adjusting his grip on the hammer and twisting it around in his hands.

"**Things are about to get hectic in a minute. Just enjoy the quite while it lasts." **Cobalt 2 responded, standing directly behind his squad mate with his back turned. Cobalt 1 and 4 both silently stood, waiting for the hollows to finally reach their position.

This was common tactic that assault terminator units employed. They simply formed a tight formation, and let their enemies crash against them. Individually, a single assault terminator was lucky if he could fight off any more than 2 or 3 normal hollows on his own. No matter how hard they could hit with their hammers, it wasn't all that hard to outmaneuver and overwhelm them when confined to such movement restricting armor. To compensate, assault terminators never allowed themselves to get separated or divided. They defended as a unit, or they attacked as a unit, but they never tried to multi-task. Sure it made their fighting style predictable, but just because you could predict your opponents moves didn't mean you could stop it. It was appropriate that they used hammers, as their tactics were every bit as blunt and straightforward as their weapons.

A large and armored snake-like hollow slammed into the earth in front of the terminator squad, causing all of Cobalt team to pivot and face the threat. Behind that hollow, a good 7 or 8 more of its weaker kin landed directly behind it, murmuring in excitement and hunger. The terminators peered even harder at the snake looking hollow, taking note of the pure black and white color, as well as its obvious sneer. It seemed to be mocking the superhumans. Definitely an adjuchas level.

"_Well would you look at thissssss? More humansssssss trying to put up a fight."_

The snake was talking to Cobalt team now, no doubt to try and mock them. It seemed like a common trait that ran in non-humans. Even hollows who were mostly made up of human souls, with a few youkai souls sprinkled in here and there, tended to fall into this weird practice. It was always curious to the augments how anyone could see a group of ten feet tall super soldiers in heavy armor, wielding electric hammers, and see it fit to try and brag about species superiority. Of course, the augments didn't mind the odd practice of their enemies monologuing during a battle. It was essentially a nice opportunity to take a free shot at the enemy while they were distracting themselves, and it was one that the PWCD veterans never failed to take.

"**_Engage._" **Cobalt 1 muttered, saying it over the COM link for only his squad to here.

_POP! _

_POP!_

_POP!_

_POP!_

The assault terminators kicked in their accelerators, briefly imitating a shinigami shunpo for a split second. One moment, the entirety of Cobalt team was at a standoff with a group of hollows, receiving a demotivational speech from the hollows' leader. The very next second, they were only a few feet away from their target, savoring the expressions of shock and surprise on their enemies faces.

_**BZZZZZZZZZT!**_

Right before they started caving their skulls in.

The adjuchas cried out in pain as a thunder hammer drove into its stomach, shattering the bone armor that protected it while simultaneously electrocuting it. Adjuchas hollows were some of the toughest hollows around, second only to vasto lorde level hollows. Considering Cobalt squad had killed one or two of those during the fighting in Karakura, they weren't all that threatened at the idea of fighting an adjuchas with some backup. The adjuchas hastily got airborne, escaping the reach of the humans' weapons.

The high level hollow's underlings weren't so lucky.

The low level hollows didn't have anywhere near the endurance or thick skin of adjuchas hollows. Nor did they have the strength or speed to dodge or parry such a blow. So when the terminators came swinging into the hollows, the creatures felt their insides being pulverized, their skin being charred, their bones being powdered, and entire limbs getting blow off by the concussive force that the thunder hammers brought with them. Those hollows that didn't take a direct hit were caught in the resulting electric discharge and temporarily disoriented, feeling their muscles spasm, and a shock of pain erupt across their bodies.

The terminators didn't stop with one swing. Quite the opposite, they followed the momentum that their original swings generated, taking their hammer into the next hollow in line, regardless of whether or not one of their squad mates were already swinging down on that particular target.

_**BZZZZZZZZZT!**_

The hollows were cleared out in scant moments. The terminators didn't stay idle, making another imitation shunpo to the nearest exposed target.

The airborne adjuchas.

_POP! _

_POP!_

_POP!_

_POP!_

The hollow in question had just been building a cero to fire down on the humans, hopefully to kill them all in a single shot. What he hadn't counted on was that the humans weren't limited to horizontal teleportation. Of course, when they accelerated into the air, they'd just fall back down, but the pause was just long enough for them get a single swing in. The entirety of Cobalt team appeared all around the airborne hollow, their hammers already in motion. Cobalt 2 had missed his swing, appearing just a little bit out of reach when he finally stopped. His allies were in no such situation. The other 3 all ended up close enough to get a single swing in. Cobalt 1 struck the hollow at its back, Cobalt 3 in its jaw, and Cobalt 4 at its side.

_**BZZZZZZT!**_

The four man team of augments plummeted to the ground, gravity reasserting itself on the augments. They landed on the ground with a light rumble of the dirt. The corpse of the snake hollow smashed into the ground head first immediately after, its armor completely shattered at four places, and charred flesh showing at the places that its natural armor was absent. If the bits of bone protruding out its back wasn't a clear indication, it was certainly dead.

"**Good work Cobalt team. That's not all of them, but that's a good chunk. The PWCD UAV's report several more adjuchas level hollows and a whole mess of weaker ones." **Cobalt 1 stated.

"**More hollows in bound." **Cobalt 3 dryly stated, pointing in the sky with the hand not currently holding his hammer.

In the sky, a single large, hawk-like hollow was flying high in the air, heading straight for them. The very tip of its beak had a bright red orb building up in size. Finally, the creature released its beak and roared, which was apparently the triggering mechanism for its attack. The lance of energy struck the dirt directly to the side of Cobalt squad, and began to rake over to towards them quite quickly.

"**Cero! Ger clear!" **Cobalt 1 ordered.

_POP! _

_POP!_

_POP!_

_POP!_

The assault terminator unit accelerated out of the path of the attack, all of them accelerating forward. The augments glared upward at the creature as it closed its mouth and started flying downward toward the augments. Its wings went back, and its claws extended outward to either claw or grab. Given its strength, it'd probably crush a semi-truck in its grip quite easily.

"_**SOOOOOOUL!"**_

A bear-like hollow jumped from the roof of a building, aiming to pounce on Cobalt 3's back, as he was the farthest out from the rest of the group. The augment in question pivoted on one foot and planted his other firmly behind him. At the same time, he turned swung his hammer in a horizontal arc, imitating the form of a professional baseball player. The hammerhead connected with the cheekbone of the hollow's mask. The monster's skull would've been caved in by the contact alone. The addition of the reiatsu concussion completely smashed its head in. The following electric discharge insured that only a charred and headless carcass remained of the hollow, while the actual body went tumbling backward in a heep.

Cobalt 3 hauled up his hammer back into a two handed grip, immensely satisfied with his kill.

"**Who's next?"**

"_**ROOOOAAR!"**_

Hollows started coming from everywhere.

Cobalt squad quickly backed into a tight formation, keeping a nervous attention on both the diving hawk hollow, and many smaller hollows running in to take their own shot at the assault terminators. If they remained how they were, they'd be caught between an adjuchas dive bomb and a hollow assault all at once. There wasn't any time to react at all. Cobalt actual decided to take control of the situation, rather than try to compensate for it instead.

"**Cobalt team, clip the adjuchas on my signal." **Cobalt actual demanded.

"**Yes sir, Cobalt actual."** The squad replied.

More and more of the hollows started getting closer, but the main threat wasn't close enough yet. That adjuchas needed to be quickly grounded and killed if progress was going to be made. The assault terminators were forced to turn their attention to the charging hollows and kill the ones that got within striking range. The few hollows that fired off ceros were disappointed to see their attacks simply burn off the paint and slightly disorient the assault terminators, but they charged anyway. They were hollows after all, and their sense of hunger overpowered their sense of self-preservation. Regardless, the hollows that got too close all ended up with the same result; death by bludgeoning.

The adjuchas finally started getting low to the ground, bending its body so that it had all its mass and power going straight forward into the augmented suit heavy suit operators.

_POP! _

_POP!_

_POP!_

_POP!_

There was an error in translation when Cobalt used the phrase 'clip'. The order obviously meant to hit the creature with a hammer. All assault terminator orders were something to that affect. However, the issue arose in that some of the squad didn't know whether they were suppose to take a swing at its outstretched claws or its wings. To solve the issue, they all sorta just winged it.

Cobalt 1, 3, and 4 appeared at either side of the creature's legs, hammers in motion. Cobalt 2 appeared at its shoulder, swinging the hammer down on the point where its wing met the torso.

_**BZZZZZZZZZT!**_

"_**ROAAAARGGH!"**_

The creature felt both of its feet suddenly get broken and electrocuted while a wing broke at the joint, messing up the creatures flight pattern entirely. The adjuchas collapsed to the dirt, smashing through whatever obstacles and objects happened to be in the way. The underling hollows were forced to get out of the way, less they be plowed over by one of their own leaders.

"**It's down. Now put it out."** Cobalt 1 ordered.

_POP! _

_POP!_

_POP!_

_POP!_

Four assault terminators appeared on either side of adjuchas' head, hammers raised to strike. As a unit, they either brought their hammers down on the creature's skull or neck. Successfully breaking either would mark the hollows death, but just to be safe they went to break both.

_**BZZZZZZZZZT!**_

And they succeeded.

"**One less bastard to deal with." **Cobalt 3 announced, pulling his hammer free from the caved-in skull of the adjuchas class hollow and banging it against the ground the get off all the brain matter surrounding the hammerhead.

"**Incoming hollows." **Cobalt 4 noted, moving into a guarded stance and bringing his hammer into cocked back position.

Cobalt team didn't linger on the kill or even acknowledge it. With hollows, it was a simple matter of consistency. Assault terminators were practically designed to be fighters of attrition. With hardy armor, powerful weapons, and well established combat tactics, they would outlast even the most determined attackers in a large melee. Hollows would steadily come in, and the assault terminator units would throw them back again and again, reeking horrific casualties with every failed attack. That was how the augments fought, and it had worked out pretty well so far.

Cobalt 1 made an overhead swing at a charging hollow. The creature brought up a giant claw to try and block to blow, feeling confident that its strength was equal to that of its enemy.

_**BZZZT!**_

The Cobalt team squad leader turned and drove the other end of the hammer into a humanoid hollow's stomach as hard as he could. The creature bent over and vomited a bit, struggling for breath. Cobalt 1 made an underhand swing on the creature, catching it in the face while it was still emptying its stomach.

_**BZZZT!**_

Cobalt 1 felt no need to worry about his squad, as they were all within 10 feet of him, or each other. Every time a thunder hammer discharged, it also caused a brief electric field that had an agonizing and debilitating effect on the hollows. Electricity sparked into their eyes and blinded them, caused their muscles to spasm, placed them in agonizing pain, and a list of other things. When you considered that the hollows were feeling these effects in the middle of a melee with combatants that could kill you with a single good swing, and it was no wonder why terminators units could cause so much damage.

Cobalt 3 was only five feet away from his squad leader, and doing horrific damage on hollows. He swung left and right at any creature that came within his field of vision. Hollows that were on ground from constant electrocution were put out of their misery. Hollows that stood tall in the face of the lightning field, were simply laid back down with a good hammer swing to either the legs or the chest. One rat-like hollow had managed to wrap its paws around the shaft of Cobalt 3's hammer to avoid getting struck. Cobalt 3 responded by taking his free hand and punching the thing in the windpipe. The moment the creature made a pained noise, Cobalt 3 yanked his hammer back, and smashed the hammerhead into the ground, causing it to release another field of electricity. The hollow howled in agony and collapsed to the ground in a spasm of muscles. Cobalt brought down his foot on the creature's head, feeling its bones creek underneath the force of his stomp. To put it away for good, he kept it down with his foot and swung his hammer down at the creature's head as if it were a golf ball.

The hollows were dying left and right, but the terminators of Cobalt team had forgotten a crucial detail. There was still a single adjuchas they hadn't accounted for.

Cobalt 2 was only barely able to get his hammer up to block from the massive punch that came his way, the concussion blast from the hammer canceling out most of the power from the punch. Even still, the blow sent the terminator stumbling backward. Another fist came his way, but Cobalt 2 was ready this time. Rather than take the blow head-on, he swatted it the side with his hammer. For a moment, he got a clear look at what exactly he was fighting.

It was a giant gorilla with two unevenly large fists, who stood a full head and chest over him. It was an adjuchas to be sure, if the white and black armor wasn't a blatant indicator. Cobalt 2 didn't pay all that much attention to how it looked, except to get a basic idea of where to hit it. The creature tried to cock back its other fist for a swing, but Cobalt 2 was faster. He brought his hammer around and struck the evolved hollow in the shoulder of the arm it intended to swing with, causing it to stumble backward.

_**BZZZT!**_

Cobalt 2 took another step forward and swung his hammer across the monster's head.

_**BZZZT!**_

The gorilla hollow stumbled two steps backward. Cobalt 2 took two steps forward, his hammer coming back around.

_**BZZZT!**_

The adjuchas was beyond muddled. It was taking all of its concentration to not trip up and fall over its own feet. No matter how hard it try to right itself or prepare a defense, that accursed hammer struck him again and caused the hollow to stumble back even further. Cobalt 2 for his part was quite frustrated. He was swinging his hammer at the hollow like a baseball bat repeatedly. After every blow, he'd bring the hammer right back for another blow. Every time the hollow stumbled backward, he shuffled forward to ensure the hollow didn't escape his swinging range. The adjuchas' bone armor was steadily flying off with every blow, but it still managed to stay upright.

Finally fed up, right when the hollow turned to the left from a hammer blow to the shoulder, Cobalt 2 made a full 360 shuffle-turn, his hammer fully extended in one hand. The hollow was still turned to the side, so the hammer struck the creature right behind its shoulder, dislocating the bone entirely. The creature fell to one knee in agony, trying to bare the spike of pain.

Cobalt took a single step forward, both his hands gripping the shaft of his thunder hammer. The hollow made a pathetic attempt to push itself away, roaring in desperation as Cobalt 2 made a hard underhand swing, putting so much force into the swing that he nearly jumped off the ground when he followed through with the attack.

_**BZZZT!**_

Blood splattered across Cobalt 2's helmet. The last blow caved the adjuchas' entire face in, leaving nothing but a bloody cavity in its place.

xxXxx

* * *

Cobalt Actual surveyed the battle field, looking out at all the hollows who had been messily brained, stomped, and crushed by his squad. There were a few here and there that sported wounds from ballistic weapons and explosives, showing that the augmented special operatives had racked up a few kills before going down. However, the vast majority were clearly the handiwork of his squad. Only an assault terminator unit would leave all their enemies looking like they were roadkill, rather than combatants who had died in battle.

The rest of his squad were walking among the dead hollows, looking for anything that still seemed to be alive. Some of the hollows had actually passed out from the result of the constant electric fields, so they may wake back up among the dead, right when their bodies were in the process of being disposed of. The PWCD certainly didn't want that. So they provided a simple solution to finding out if a hollow was dead or not. They looked for bodies that didn't seem to have been bludgeoned to death, and taped the ground near those bodies with their hammers. If the resulting electric discharge didn't jolt them into consciousness, then they were dead. If they actually woke up, they had a thunder hammer speared into their skull. Simple.

"**This is Cobalt Actual to Terra Actual. All hollows have been neutralized. You can come out."** Cobalt 1 stated, feeling quite satisfied with his squad's work..

"..." There was a pause on the other end. "I don't believe it. We got our asses whooped by those things, and your saying you and cleared them out in less than an hour!?" Cobalt 1 could understand why he was angry. He had just seen his men die and get wounded fighting seemingly unstoppable creatures. Despite all the support and help he had, they failed to win. Then suddenly 4 guys with hammers completely triumphed where all of them had failed, all without taking a single casualty. It was unfair in a way, but that was simply how things were. All the assault terminator squad leader could do was keep professional.

"**PWCD command wouldn't have sent us if we couldn't get the job done. A Njal carrier is on route for us, but I ordered it to grab your squad first." **

Cobalt 1 paused, watching as lizard hollow started to spasm and scream when Cobalt 4 gave it a light tap with the head of the hammer. Immediately after finding that it was still alive, Cobalt 4 stomped on its back and drove the pole end of the hammer into the creature's forehead, going straight through its skull and out its jaw. Needless to say, the hollow stopped moving.

"**We have to make sure these things are all down for good." **There was a pause on the other end of the COM link.

"I don't care if most of these things were human. Kill every last one of them and let them rot where they drop." Terra 1 spat out. Cobalt 1 smirked underneath his helmet. The world needed more soldiers like these.

"**Don't worry, that's our job." '**And we do our job pretty damn good.' Cobalt 1 mentally added.

xxXxx


	15. Genesis

"The God who equipped me and made my way blameless. He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. He trained my arms for war so that I may bend a bow of bronze."-Psalm 18: 32-34

xxXxx

* * *

**Genesis**

The PWCD president was disappointed at the way things were going, but not surprised.

The United Nations was the official representative government of all of humanity. All groups of humans capable of establishing themselves as a country or sovereign power were accepted into the ranks of the U.N. government without question. As such, they were currently responsible for upholding the world-wide morals and laws that applied to all of humanity. They had only existed as a means of establishing peace and tranquility between two or more countries in conflict in a non-violent way, assuming the two countries couldn't reconcile their differences themselves. Just as well, should a country commit an atrocity that would ignite a conflict or worse, the U.N. had the power to amass a coalition force from the armies of multiple countries to crush the offender, as was demonstrated in "Operation: Desert Storm". The United Nations had originally existed as an international peacekeeping entity, not an international government.

That was before it became public knowledge that humanity didn't have exclusive control of the planet Earth.

Now the United Nations was the unofficial governing force that humanity in general expected to direct them against the current threats that faced them. The introduction of humanity to non-human and ab-human creatures had been the greatest and most devastating genocide in human history, which obviously left the entirety of the human population prepared to go to war. If it wasn't for the fact that the perpetrators of the genocide had been defeated and hunted down to every last member and supporter within a few months, the entire youkai species would've been wiped out in retaliation. It was only due to the swift diplomatic damage control of Akasha Bloodriver that such an event was halted, rather than simply prolonged. Even still, the human population of the world was now antsy and paranoid of their surroundings. They fully expected, endorsed even, that they go to global war with anything that wasn't human. And the United Nations were being pressured to organize such a war from nearly the entire human population, especially from the countries who happened to be near Japan.

As a result, the United Nations was being very vocal about their preparations for potential war.

The international organization of world leaders was being outfitted with an international drone army. Said force was currently ready for deployment and comprised entirely out of armed UAV drones aka 'Dragonfire drones', self-piloting aerial vehicles, and self-piloting mini-tanks called 'Whippet drones'. The force of drones was completely ineffectual on their own. Their accuracy was horrible, they were incapable of tactics or coordinating troop movements, and they were incapable of doing such things as taking prisoners or differentiating between non-humans who were civilians or allies and non-humans who were combatants. In short, the drone army was nothing more than a large force of self-firing guns, with no intelligence or intuition behind them. Of course, they made great support for a human army. Simulations showed that drones were perfect for launching blitzkrieg assaults, while trained marksmen sat at a safe distance and picked off enemies who were too engrossed in fighting off the swarms of drones. And the drones were so easy to produce that losing a hundred of them in a single engagement was hardly an issue to make note of.

In addition to an endless number of drones they could throw at enemies, the United Nations had publicly stated to all the watching media stations in the world that in the event of conflict between humans and non-humans, the Geneva code would be null and void, as it was only applicable to inner human conflicts. This meant that bio-warfare, torture, disposal of prisoner policy, disposal of the protection of non-combatants, disposal of occupation conduct, and even use of nuclear weapons to a degree were all given the green light to be employed freely should a conflict ever come.

Another not-so-subtle hint was the string of military reforms and dramatic rise of weapons testing, which ranged from test firing infantry firearms to having entire squadrons of bombers go on strafing runs across open plains. It wasn't uncommon for such events to be public and aired live by broadcast teams. The more destructive and inhumane that a weapon was, the more attention it got.

All of this was the United Nations' way of flexing their muscles, both to placate the human public that they were safe from attack, and to be a warning to all non-humans about what was coming should another incident occur like the Japan Massacre.

The PWCD president didn't have a problem with any of this. He and the Pope had been chatting quite a bit about the immense hostility that was growing in human culture. Society as a whole was becoming less and less averse to violence, especially if the justification of said violence was associated to non-humans in any way. Neither of the men felt any serious issue with this. What they did have issue with was that the U.N. was secretly organizing a world wide mission that they wished the PWCD to be a part of.

An alpha strike.

The Pope and president had both felt their hearts stop for a moment when they heard the United Nations Security Council come upon their decision. The United Nations wanted to launch a planet wide alpha strike, using the mass network of information that the PWCD had accumulated on all the non-human entities of the world. The theory of an alpha strike was simple. The attacker would launch a surprise attack on all of their enemy's major locations of importance at once by using a heavy bombardment, usually followed by a mass invasion. The attack was so sudden and far spread that the defenders were already in ruins before they could even begin to organize a proper defense.

And because the PWCD had such a wealth of information on non-humans, the U.N. had all but ordered them to be one of the head directors of the attack. Such an invasion was very complex. The attacker had to know the exact locations of the all of the enemy's bases, or at least most of them. They had to have a solid idea of the enemy's troop movements and locations, as well as that of their leaders and powerful figures. You had to know the enemy's capabilities, as well as the potential war assets they could bring to bear in response to an attack. Just as well, you had to know exactly what kind of defenses the enemy had for countering invasions.

The United Nations had all these issues and more. They had to organize all of the other nation's militaries of the world into a secure and organized combative force that wouldn't have any issues with different chains of command or such. They had to organize which counties would attack which locations, as well as ferry over additional troops and drones for reinforcements where it was necessary. Private militaries and specialized mercenaries would have to be employed to cover areas where the local countries didn't have much in the way of a strong military. Not only that, but a series of special operations would be going on before, during, and after the fighting. This would all have to be done in a way that didn't tip off the any of their enemies that an attack was coming. It didn't help that the media was quick to catch on to the string of military growth across the world, though they simply attributed it to additional preparations in the instance that a monster invasion came.

The PWCD was the only known international force that would be able to operate all over the world at once without running into any jurisdiction issues and such, which made it almost mandatory that the PWCD be at the heart of this operation, even though they'd only make up a few thousand soldiers compared to the untold millions who would no doubt be out in the field.

Ignoring the fact that such a bold move had never even been attempted before in the history of the PWCD organization, or the entire world for that matter, that they didn't have enough information all the parties involved to make such a move with confidence, or the fact that the augmented soldiers were still fresh out of the conflict in Japan, the PWCD simply didn't want to attempt such a thing. In addition, the Holy Church would have to not only expose its secretive nature to the United Nations, but inform them of the espionage they had been undertaking for untold millennia that the PWCD had recently partook in. If that weren't enough, the Pope would then be forced to commit the entirety of the military arm of the Vatican to this attack as well, which would permanently destroy whatever ceasefire that they had with the Magus Association.

That brought up the final point that made the PWCD clearly not want to go through with this attack. The United Nations didn't want to launch a global alpha strike on any single non-human entity. Doing things that way would've prompted all of the other groups that humans should be wary of to either prepare for an invasion or launch their own preemptive attack on humanity and have a repeat of the Japan massacre all over the world. The United Nations wouldn't allow themselves to be caught in a giant war of attrition across the globe, which is what would result if they attacked any single non-human force. They wanted to preemptively take out ALL the groups they had perceived as threats to the human populace at once.

The youkai, Dead Apostle Ancestors, Magus Association, and Witches cult were all groups that the United Nations had wanted to completely exterminate in a single organized attack.

The only reason the hollows and shinigami didn't make that list was because they were located in another dimension. While it was indeed possible to send troops and equipment into the hollow world and soul society efficiently, they didn't have anywhere near enough strength to maintain a war in two or three different dimensions at once. Hell, the PWCD president didn't like the chances of winning this war in their home dimension. Most importantly though, the spirit world didn't seem to be all that active at the moment, still reeling from the monumental losses they had received in the fighting in Karakura.

Ignoring that matter, he truly didn't believe that the youkai were a threat as a whole. Quite the opposite, many of them were quite beneficial to humanity and willing to coexist. Such examples were the snow people, the exorcist and his school, the remnants of the succubus species, as well as most of the youkai species. Even the vampires, werewolves, and other S-class beings had to begrudgingly accept that the human's control of Earth wasn't even remotely threatened by the youkai race as a whole. So in classic monster fashion, they conceded to the clearly stronger species, something the PWCD president was quite thankful for.

The PWCD president made a strong case for the youkai to not be listed as enemies. The few groups in their species that had started up to try and oppose the human species, such as Anti-Thesis, had been ruthlessly crushed before they could even begin to rise up. The list of youkai groups who not only held no hostile intentions, but tried to support humanity was quite large and had done a great deal for the youkai species in improving a monster's capability to function properly in human society.

The United Nation's Security Council held the position that it wasn't a matter of whether or not the youkai wished to attack, but that they would feel obligated to do so for their own survival once they saw all the other non-human groups come under spontaneous and violent assault. So by logic, to prevent such an offensive, they'd have to strike the youkai down as a threat as well. No chances could be taken. The PWCD president had wanted to deny that as a possibility, but found himself realizing that he couldn't. When the augmentation process had first begun, the PWCD had come down hard on all youkai who encroached on the human population. In response, nearly the entire monster species tried to organize into a single fighting force. It was only due to the constant needling sabotages and assassinations that the PWCD launched that prevented this from happening. Even if the youkai themselves weren't pushing for war, the second they saw humans launch an international crusade on non-humans, they'd almost immediately jump to the conclusion that they were next on the chopping block. There couldn't be anyone to tell the youkai leaders not to fear invasion, because if the youkai allowed an information leak to those that they were indeed planning to strike, then the consequences would be unimaginable.

He hadn't succeeded in getting the youkai removed as targets, but he did ensure that the PWCD was fully prepared to intercept any attacks that the youkai may launch, as well as any attacks other non-human or ab-human groups may launch. So plans for an invasion on the youkai home dimensions and 'secret locations' were temporarily retracted. They were still being heavily monitored however, and a task force with drone support was being built up in China in the event that the Youkai species made any curious movements. That would have to do because if the youkai really did launch another attack, even if it was only a small minority of their species acting, then the United Nations would come down hard on all of monster kind with the intent of genocide.

If the list of issues and grievances wasn't enough however, the one glaring flaw in this plan was that the various non-human groups that were being targeted weren't strictly militaristic organizations. In some cases this was a great advantage, and in others, a great disadvantage.

Here were the advantages. Because non-humans didn't have as well-developed a sense of warfare as most human organizations, they couldn't easily prevent themselves from being tracked and monitored electronically, assuming they knew they were being monitored to begin with. Just as well, they tended to nearly broadcast the strength of their forces. Every sort of specialist division or elite force that non-humans had, were not only bragged about constantly, but in a few cases even had a direct measure of their abilities available to any random person who asked about their strength. What little information about enemy troop strength that spies and close monitoring couldn't easily gleam, the Holy Church easily filled in. The main concerns were the Dead Apostle Ancestors and Magus Association, who the Church knew plenty about. They even had a list on the Dead Apostles that ranked their threat level to the human species, which the President of the PWCD found almost too convenient. They also had a list of names of prominent houses and names in the Magus Association, which enabled the United Kingdom to freeze all of their assets at once if need be. So in short, learning where these groups resided and how much they could bring to bear in a fight was easily learned.

Then came the disadvantages. All of the non-human entities were scattered about. They rarely ever congregated or moved in a way that put all that many of them in a single place, which was extremely aggravating for an attacker who wanted to launch a large scale alpha strike. That meant that many of the pivotal leaders and soldiers of the target groups had to be attacked all over the world, all at once, or else they may be able to relay information to one another and prepare for an attack. Their lack of an all encompassing command structure coupled with their tendency to act independently of the rest of their organizations would make most attempts at disruption fall flat, which was a major part of an alpha strike. An alpha strike against an unprepared human army would be hugely successful as the defenders couldn't organize an effective resistance or prepare their weapons in time. An alpha strike against most non-humans would be shoddy at best, mainly because non-humans and ab-humans generally didn't need any form of preparation time or command structure before going to battle.

Finding out the locations, movements, and strength of the target groups was easy. Forming a plan that could hit and surprise all of them at once was the real issue.

And all the while, the PWCD was still maintaining all their operations against non-human entities. The Holy Church was still preaching the word of God by day and hunting demons, mutants, and heretics by night. The Magus Association was still continuing their usual studies and shady actions. The Dead Apostles were inexplicably going quiet, having nearly ceased all their attempts at raiding and destroying normally quiet towns, and simply keeping up their farces of being humans. The United Nations kept up the appearance that they had no intention of using their militaristic force in anything but self-defense, even though the Magus Association, Vatican, and PWCD all knew better. All of these groups knew that one way or another, things were going to go to hell. But simply for the sake of appearances, they all maintained their normal activities so as not to tip anyone off in this Cold War they had created.

So rather than think about the untold millions of people who were about to die, he decided to simply enjoy the semblance of quiet that there was now.

xxXxx

* * *

"Welcome to your new training regime. From here on out, I'm gonna teach all of ya to talk, walk, and sound like a special operative. Usually this isn't hard, because most special operatives start out as normal soldiers, but since none of you have that experience, we'll be going back to the basics. Any questions?" Grave 1, aka Jacob asked.

Silence.

"Good." The augment grunted.

The PWCD had wanted to train their arrancar soldiers in the methods of war that special operators employed. The main issue that had caused the enemy arrancar to be so easily routed and killed in Karakura was that they didn't understand the value of efficiency and coordination in warfare. They treated war as if it were some sort of sport or a test of skill. The PWCD didn't want a repeat of what Harribel had done with Gyokuro; pointlessly dragging out the process of killing her for almost five minutes, which in any other scenario could've compromised the mission and allowed her to escape. If these arrancar were going to be a part of the most powerful black ops organization in the world, they'd learn to fight and act like black operatives. The first step of this was teaching them the basics of being proper soldiers.

Jacob mentally groaned.

Jacob and his squad, along with two other squads on the base had been given the thankless task of educating ALL of the arrancar in the PWCD to being up to speed on how being an actual soldier works. PWCD command's expectations were that the arrancar were efficient killers, acted with a sense of squad coherency, and followed orders without needing a lengthy explanation. It was simple to teach this to a fresh recruit. They usually came in with a good idea of what the military would be like, and how they should act. These arrancar however were different. They were already used to an idiotic honor system where they fought all their enemies one on one and the battle ended when one person crushed the other both physically and mentally, and outside interference was rare. The arrancar had gotten overrun because the augments were blindsiding enemies, attacking in groups, calling in aerial support, sneak attacking, assassinating, and using every dirty trick they could possibly think of, which served to confuse and disrupt them to no end. The PWCD wanted to break the arrancar of this design flaw.

Grave team had been assigned Harribel, Apacci, Mila-Rose, and Sung Sun.

Trident Team had been assigned Cirucci, Dondochaka, Pesche, Neliel, and (for some odd reason) Bawabawa.

Spear Team had been assigned Grimmjow, Stark, Lilynette, and Ulquiorra.

Harribel, Apacci, Mila-Rose, and Sung-Sun, were all formed into a single squad, seeing as they already had some basic experience working as such before. Jacob was counting his blessings, as that meant that they already had more training on squad value than all of the other arrancar. So he went ahead and declared the four women as their own squad. Shark team. He declared Harribel to be the squad leader, who would otherwise be known as either 'Shark 1' or 'Shark Actual'. Then he randomly slapped the numbers 2 through 4 on her fraccion, giving Apacci 3, Mila-Rose 4, and Sung Sun 2. They began yelling at him over why they received the numbers they did, except for Sung-Sun who praised him for 'clearly seeing who was best suited to being the second in command'.

He tried to tell them that all the numbers past 1 didn't mean anything, and that they only served to keep track of who was who without saying anyone's name. He took the time to explain that the PWCD use codenames because many people in the PWCD didn't even speak the same language, had similar codenames, and countless other issues. So all augments were referred to by the name of their squad and whatever number they had, whenever they were on a mission. They settled down for all of 5 minutes. That was around the time that he started the squad exercises.

The exercise had been simple. He and his squad used the simulation room and used rubber rounds to pin down Harribel and the rest of her team. They were forbidden from trying to simply rush forward at them through the hail of rubber rounds, as such a plan would get them killed in real combat. So they were to make a plan that would get his squad to cease firing, or at least disrupt them for a bit. From there, Shark team would quickly move in for the metaphorical killing blow.

It started out fine. Avery and Javier were pinning down the women with massed shots. Jacob and Specter were sniping down on Shark team, intentionally missing head shots to get the women accustomed to not sticking their heads out of cover. Eli was hanging back near Avery and Javier, seeing as the extent of his ranged abilities was throwing knives. For one accustomed to live fire simulations, the obvious solution would be to change cover and return fire.

With their natural abilities to fire balas and use sonido, this should've been simple. Instead, Shark team got oddly creative.

Mila-Rose tore one of fake rocks off from the ground and hurled it at Avery, who cursed and barrel rolled out of the way. Through some sort of dumb luck, that rock kept going and smashed against the elevated spire that Specter was using as a vantage point. The surprising jolt knocked him off his perch where he fell for 3 stories and landed flat on his stomach, leaving him winded on the ground. Apacci and Sung Sun fired balas at Jacob's general direction and didn't come close to hitting him, but pounded his position so hard that the shooting tower he was standing on collapsed underneath him. Mila-Rose started hurling random objects at Javier, who was hurling an increasing number of vulgarities back at the woman with every additional object she threw.

During all that, Harribel sonido'd directly in Eli's face and greeted him with a flying knee to the chest, not powering the blow with much of her reiatsu, but still coming at him with enough strength for him to feel it. Apparently she figured that if she could defeat him in hand to hand, then she'd have successfully surpassed him. Eli, hopelessly confused by now if the training exercise was even still going, simply avoided every one of her attacks while 'asking' her to stop. His 'asking' escalated to 'aggravated yelling' when she damn near fractured his arm with a hard forearm strike. When Jacob told them not to make any attempts at conversation while fighting, then explained the reason why they didn't do such things, Harribel took the lesson more to heart than anyone else. She was typically silent in battle long before meeting the PWCD, so being encouraged to be more coldly coordinated than she already was served to only encourage her. Sadly, she also took this to mean that when her CQC teacher was telling her to stop trying to hit him, he was actually testing her resolve to hold her vow to ignore any sort of banter in battle.

Jacob was unceremoniously pulling himself out of the rubble of the collapsed tower, looking more than a little angry. He stood to his full height and looked over the damage they had done to the training room. Many of the objects that were supposed to be used as cover from rubber rounds were steadily being ripped out the ground by Mila-Rose and hurled at Javier, who was in turn responding by pelting her with more rubber rounds and vulgarities.

Apacci and Sung-Sun were harassing Avery and Specter, mainly by charging through a hail of rubber rounds and trying to stab them with their bladed weapons, even though he was pretty sure to tell them to NOT try to kill one another. Specter redirected one of Apacci's swings and made her nearly nick Sung-Sun, which made the two arrancar start attacking each other. Avery and Specter both tried to remind them that friendly fire would get them killed in real combat. Apacci told them to 'mind their own damn business', right before blocking a thrust from Sung Sun.

Harribel was still trying to beat up Eli, who by now had lost his patience and was lighting Tia up with chain punches. The fact that she was a high level espada however, made her easily brush off the punches and reply with her own, which Eli easily dodged and redirected. Since the two couldn't really hurt each other, it was more a test of who would eventually get tired from fighting, rather than any test of relevant skill. They were so caught up in this, that they didn't even notice everyone else going crazy while they were having their own personal spat.

Jacob took deep breaths, reminding himself that he wasn't the only one dealing with this insanity. There were two other squads having just as much trouble with this as he was. In fact, because his group was the closest to being a squad out of all of them, coupled with the fact he had been hanging around them for the better half of a year meant he was probably having the easiest time out of any of them.

At least that's what he told himself.

* * *

_Trident squad_

Trident actual had to admit that out of all the arrancar, he had gotten the weirdest of the bunch. Grave team had gotten four women who appeared to have some semblance of squad coherency. Spear team had gotten the group who seemed to be the most combat capable, minus the little girl who was dressed in clothing that would look inappropriate on a grown woman (which was no longer an issue since they were all being made to wear PWCD fatigues). Trident 1 found it slightly suspicious that out of their entire group, the most capable looking person of the bunch had been a 5'4 green haired girl who was almost famous for her ability to sweet talk most of the personnel in the base.

Despite all his doubts however, they were actually catching on pretty well.

During the squad exercises, they actually used teamwork to support one another. The things with the insect and tiki masks were running around and causing a large distraction for his squad, using some weird goo and energy beam to harass them. Neliel was needling his squad with well placed ceros to disrupt them. Bawabawa was functioning as mobile cover so that no one was under serious risk of being struck with rubber rounds so long as his giant mass was in the way. Cirucci was directing all of their movements, while occasionally using a killer yo-yo to keep his squad from advancing on them.

Obviously augments wouldn't have any trouble moving and maneuvering under fire, nor would they have been so easily routed by such a simple method of attack had this been a real battle. Just as well, none of the arrancar had anything to fear from rubber rounds. Even normal bullets and armor penetration rounds would only leave small cuts and bruises at best, unless they hit the eye, mouth or some other area not protected by arrancar hierros. The purpose of this exercise was getting the arrancar used to functioning as a team, not trying to gauge their combat abilities.

It was going smoothly, and he only occasionally had to pause the exercise to tell them something not to try in live combat. Once he told them to stop shouting the names of their attacks, and to not build up their more powerful attacks in open ground where they could easily be interrupted, they began to start looking like an actual team of soldiers.

* * *

_Spear team_

Spear actual had very few problems during the training. Grimmjow was the only real hitch due to his rebelliousness, and once Ulquiorra pulled him aside for a quick talk, he settled down a bit. He was still obscenely aggravating, but he was listening at least. Spear 1 wished he could wallop him upside the head sometimes, but considering that he didn't know of any ways to hurt an arrancar that wouldn't be considered torture to another human, he was content to simply scowl when Grimmjow pissed him off.

Like everyone else, they had a squad exercise in one of the training rooms. Spear team assumed the position of enemy shooters that had them pinned down. The arrancar were to find a way to use their powers in tandem to fight off the augments while simultaneously avoiding being hit by rubber rounds. They also told them that so long as no one was killed or seriously injured, the training room was left undamaged, and no one did anything stupid, any tactic they could think of was open.

Once the exercise began, Starrk declared that he was surrendering.

Spear team looked at one another for a moment, before they finally decided to send someone to tell them that surrendering to the enemy fell under the category of 'doing something stupid'. Spear 2 began walking over to Starrk to tell them that he wasn't allowed to surrender, and to make an actual plan of combat.

Suddenly Stark pulled a gun on the man and told him to freeze, stating that it fired ceros which he couldn't dodge.

Then he proceeded to tell Spear team to 'surrender or their buddy gets one in the head'. Spear 1 asked what the hell was going on. Ulquiorra and Grimmjow appeared behind his squad with charged ceros in their hands and told them that this was their plan of action. It was intelligent, didn't run a serious risk of being hit by rubber rounds, and didn't injure anybody so long as they valued their life. The rest of Spear team gave their squad leader questioning looks. He looked back at them and shrugged.

Spear actual was pretty sure that this wasn't how the exercise was supposed to work, but he gave them an A for effort anyway.

* * *

After the training exercises had ended, everyone congregated in one of the more spacious meeting rooms to give assessments. This was mainly just to share notes between squads, as they'd be sharing all of their actual progress with command. Still, it was nice to wind down after a decent training session.

Trident team and their arrancar seemed very satisfied with their progress. A squad leader of the most legendary spec ops division in the world, the PWCD, had praised their ability to work together. He claimed that their coordination with each other even exceeded some of the attempts of newly formed augment squads during their initial training sessions. Once they were ready, he wouldn't have minded working with them in a serious combat situation.

The Spear team squad leader said that his arrancar group was very unconventional about how they solved their problems. They used methods that were both unexpected and uncanny, which was always welcomed in any branch of special operatives so long as the method was actually practical and yielded results. He echoed the squad leader of Trident team and let it be known that he wouldn't mind working with them, so long as they didn't get a little too creative out on the field.

Jacob listened to the reports of his peers with steadying depression.

Apacci and Sung Sun were sporting a couple of band-aids and brand new PWCD fatigues, seeing as their old ones were shredded to hell. Mila-Rose had numerous welts on her skin from standing out in the open while Javier lit her up with rubber rounds. Eli was trying to play off a large bruise he had on his arm from Harribel's attempt to maim him. Harribel for her part was as unreadable as ever, even though her clothing was clearly stressed quite a bit. Avery and Specter were both completely uninjured, and quietly laughing to each other about how everyone else had gotten messed up while they stood to the side and quietly watched. Lastly was Jacob, who had hurt his back a little with that fall he had.

As he stood to give his critique, he gave a glance to both his squad and Harribel's group. All of them just sorta stared at him, all of them knowing that they definitely dropped the ball compared to everyone else.

"I've officially listed my group as their own squad. From here on out, they'll be known as Shark team. They've displayed great tenacity and power during the exercise and I've already had the pleasure of working with them once before, and once they've finished their training, they'll become very valuable members of the PWCD."

Jacob sat down and unapologetically ignored the 'what the fuck' looks his squad were shooting him. His group may have messed up the most, but that didn't mean anyone else had to know that. If they asked him about why the training room they had used was a train wreck, he'd respond by saying that things had gotten out of control over the course of time. If they pulled up the recording and watched it... well they couldn't accuse him of lying since he hadn't said anything that wasn't true. He simply left out the negatives.

He regretted nothing.


	16. Loose Ends

**Author's Note: **Sorry to do another one of these, but I have to get this out. I openly regard my prequel to this story, Humans Strike Back, as heavily flawed. I didn't study up as much on special forces and modern military tech than as I did with this story. Beyond that, I embarrassed myself with the number of grammatical errors. To my surprise the story was still genuinely well received in spite of all this. I even had support from fanfiction writers like Nietzchain, who are far greater in caliber than I'll be for a good while. Despite Humans Strike Back having every flaw I'd staple to a bad or average fanfic, I was quite surprised by the support. From what I was told, it's not even so much the fic itself as the concept behind it, which is for humans to stop being treated like fledglings the second something powerful comes along.

Of course, I also attracted haters. No wait, that's not quite accurate. Most of the negative criticisms there where were genuine attempts at correcting my writing and storytelling, which I tried to take to heart. I can't think of more than one or two reviewers who made legitimate flaming attempts, and even most of them calmed down once I explained to them why some of the things they were complaining about happened the way they did. However, there was this one guy over half a year ago, who literally read my story from start to finish, and commented on nearly every chapter, purely to flame it. Needless to say, I got into an argument with him that endured for several days. Finally I got tired with the back and forth, as he apparently didn't understand his stuff all that well but was convinced that it was impossible for him to be wrong, and blocked him. To this day, he's the only person on fanfiction I've ever blocked before. I only recently took him off the block list cause I forgot why I blocked him in the first place. It wasn't because he flamed me, but when I asked him "why read and comment if you don't like it?" he responded with "I consider it my duty to destroy train wreck fanfics like these!". So apparently he decided that it was his divine duty to judge my fic. His honest goal was to try and get me to say he was right and I was wrong, so that I'd take the fic down... Narcissism much? Guy's account name was Evan Deviant.

Oh, it gets better.

Turns out that he seriously took that argument to heart and wrote a deviant art article on it called "Humans Strike Back, WORST FAN FIC EVER" by 345rv5. I didn't even know it was him writing the article until he brought up the Aizen/Tsar Bomba comparison (which shows how little he knows, considering he's comparing a nuke to anything but another nuke as a power gauge). This guy seriously took the time to go reread in detail through a story he deeply hated, summarize every chapter as well as include his less than friendly criticisms, and even started quoting stuff off my profile as proof of how horrible a person I am in real life. I'm still trying to get over the part where he calls me 'macho chauvinistic' based on the fact that I dislike the general archetype for teenage Japanese boys. Then there's the awkward moment where he actually agrees with one of my opinions on anime, but throws some ridiculous insult anyway just for consistency. Not only that, he even labeled our ensuing argument as "me insulting his intelligence", which I won't lie, I did over and over again when it became readily apparent any politeness I offered wouldn't be returned.

Apparently that article has been up for several months, yet I would've never even heard of it had I not googled the name of my own story out of boredom to see what would come up. Which I find strange, considering his article got a decent amount of attention. I would've thought someone would relay the information of a hate article to the person it was directed against. Kinda weird how in that entire article, he never mentioned that I thought the fic was lackluster myself, and I'm the guy that wrote it! I even told him I didn't think much of it past the attention it was getting. Haters gonna hate, I guess. I feel like I should be honored that he devoted such time and effort to trying to spite me.

I'm genuinely tempted to let him know I have a sequel, just to see if he writes a follow up article called "Crimes Against Humanity, THE NEW WORST FANFIC EVER". However, In the interest of avoiding another pointless argument where he tries to explain his astounding lack of physics knowledge, I'll just continue writing this and see if it gains enough attention for him to notice it. To all fellow fan-fiction readers and writers who are experiencing hate from people you don't really know, and will probably never meet in your life, laugh at them. Let them know that however much they think they're bothering you, they're just entertaining you with their ravings.

Anyway, you can disregard all this if you're just here to read the story.

xxXxx

* * *

"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship" _-George Bernard Shaw_

xxXxx

* * *

**Loose Ends**

The PWCD was uncontested for having the most dangerous soldiers in history. You could easily make the argument that they were cheating though, since they propositioned all the best soldiers in every modern military to join them.

Regardless, the soldiers of the black ops organization inspired fear and trepidation in all of the species of the world. This wasn't because the soldiers were particularly strong or had any particularly noteworthy powers. There was very little the PWCD could employ for battle that hadn't been seen or imitated in some manner. The average augment special operator was little more than a human soldier who was altered to be stronger and faster than normal. This was hardly new or intimidating in of itself, as such things have been done millennia before the PWCD was even conceived. Their guns were no different than what soldiers all over the world already used. Even their armor was just as much for the purpose of preventing outside influences on the wearer as it was for actual protection, and even this wasn't unique. When it came to the individual soldier's ability, they were actually very underwhelming compared to some of the things they fought. Of course, none of these were what the black operations organization based their performance off of.

The Paranormal Warfare Contingency and Defense organization was feared, not for their abilities, but their overall mindset.

The PWCD's military arm was a mixing pot of different Special Forces branches with personnel of varying backgrounds. They all had slightly different methods of how they operated, but if there was anything they shared, it was the simple fact that everything in war was permitted. Augments brought down their enemies by using whatever worked. If a particular method of attack wasn't working, then they changed. If no immediate changes could be made that would provide success, then they would either retreat and came back with something that would tip the scales, or stall until reinforcements could arrive. There was such diversity in the way the PWCD attacked that even after a hundred years of operation, none of the PWCD's enemies could accurately predict how the black operations organization would move, or exactly how they'd respond to a certain threat. Because the PWCD recruited from so many different SpecialForces divisions with varying skill sets, the PWCD could competently run a mission while utilizing amphibious assault tactics and have a halo jumping based operation on the very next mission. This unpredictability and anonymity made attacks launched by the PWCD to be either too sudden or too brutal to respond in time to.

And no branch of the PWCD military arm was more established in this mindset than the organization's commando teams.

If the PWCD could be described as a dagger, then the commandos were precise needles. Very few outside of the PWCD even knew about the specialized group of super soldiers, as they were a secretive group. At first glance, most would assume them to be normal augmented operators in slightly bulkier armor. Their armor was slightly bulkier from the higher required power output. Their helmets had forgone the visors and built in goggles PWCD helmets typically used in favor of a full faceplate of opaque plexiglass. Their armor was devoid of any belts or straps that augments typically wore outside their armor to hold their gear, as commando armor already had special compartments built in for that exact purpose. They were certainly more pretty looking than what most armored augments tended to be, but any attractiveness in the design was purely by accident or coincidence.

These were the soldiers that the PWCD called out when no chances for failure could be taken whatsoever.

Mind you, this special brand of augments had originally been purposed to being arrancar hunters. Their armor was powered by a small reiatsu battery that powered their physical ability to a point that they were capable of physically matching a mid to low level arrancar in a test of strength. After the conclusion of the battle of Karakura, with Aizen being dead along with nearly the entire arrancar species, the commandos had lost their primary purpose. S-class youkai were the next biggest threats compared to the arrancar, and they were dealt with fairly easily by the other branches of the PWCD special operatives. Most S-class creatures, however powerful they were, weren't immune to bullets. Of the creature immune to normal bullets, all of them could still be killed with armor penetrating rounds or poisoned tipped bullets.

So the PWCD decided to re-purpose them to being hunters of the more powerful creatures the PWCD encountered.

After the end of the war in Japan, the remnants of Fairy Tale had been scattered long and far. Kahlua and Akuha, daughters of the late Gyokuro and prominent leaders in Fairy Tale, had been amongst those remnants. The two children had apparently planned to sneak into North Korea, where it'd be hard for any non-North Koreans to pursue them without the North Korean's direct permission. Commando team Zi stormed their hideout and killed both the sisters within seconds. Their bodies were dumped into the sea on the off chance that a 3 inch large bullet hole in the brain was capable of being regenerated by vampires.

A few months later, a group calling themselves "Anti-Thesis" was starting to build up. Commando teams Alpha and Theta infiltrated their so-called 'secret hideout', and killed every single being that had been listed in as a potential higher-up in their organization. The commandos moved so quickly and decisively that anyone particularly noteworthy within the group was dead before they even knew it. The commandos pulled out immediately after every target was confirmed dead, the matter of killing the rest of Anti-Thesis being left to the 5 special operations squads of augments, along with 2 bunker suits packing sonic cannons.

During a so called "gas explosion" that had killed a family of 5 and another family of 9 within a city in Vietnam, Beta team stormed the hideout of a group of Magi enforcers responsible for the family's death. The reiatsu enhanced augments cut down the 5 man group of enforcers in seconds. Most of them didn't even realize they were being attacked until it was far too late. The few that did notice were dead before they could perform any magecraft. The bodies were stacked and burned, along with any belongings they had that weren't worth any interest.

During the ending months of fighting in Japan, a 9 tailed youko rose up to try and engineer a small invasion in India while trying to recruit more youkai to his cause. He had only broadcasted his intent to his fellow youkai for two days before the PWCD located him and sent commando team Omega after him. The instigator was shot in the back of the head at point blank range while he wasn't looking. To ensure no one found him, his body was taken back to a PWCD base in Mexico and disposed of in the most appropriate manner.

The commando teams seldom ever got any assignments, but when they did, they were sure to be very thorough. It was for this reason that the commandos were being selected for a new assignment.

xxXxx

* * *

A string of murders were occurring in Germany. A large group of civilians in the city of Berlin had been killed supposedly by the result of a gas leak. The PWCD knew better. Any self-respecting gas company would've been shut down if they so carelessly allowed malfunctions like this to occur even once, if not be sued by hundreds of families for millions of dollars each. Just as well, the police reports listed the event as a gas leak without actually finding any malfunctions in the gas pipes. On the contrary, the gas pipes weren't even touched. Any civilians who attempted to press charges against the gas company in question were given a nice hush money check and told to stay quiet about what happened. Those civilians in question had their calls and transactions watched just in case. Just as well, the presidents of all media companies attempting to investigate were told to stay silent about the matter and keep their reporters from investigating past the explosion itself, or else.

The gas leak excuse was simply an age old code that national governments used when they wanted to silently clue the PWCD into a serious supernatural event.

The known information was that there were indeed magi at work here. The PWCD had been ruthlessly interrogating the magi prisoners they acquired in order to find a way to identify when something was the result of magi foul play or not. After months of testing and observing acquired magi POW's, they had found a way to detect this 'prana' they used. And the dead bodies of the German civilians were practically covered in prana signatures. They had been completely drained of all their blood, which was omitted from public knowledge for the sole reason that the people of Germany would be outright rioting for the genocide of all youkai, even though the youkai were innocent of this offense. Though this pointed toward Dead Apostles, a prospect that horrified the PWCD, it could also be the experimentations of a magus who was using some sort of blood based magic or trying to become a Dead Apostle.

An inquiry from the local Roman Catholic Church informed the PWCD operatives that the only known magi in the area were those located in one of the Einzbern's castles. As the church themselves had been monitoring the Einzberns heavily, they confirmed that if it was a magi, it wasn't the Einzberns. As a result of this information, insect drones were sent to every castle in the general area, the German government having adapted the U.K.'s system and kept tabs on these castles secretly. For whatever reason, wealthy magic users thought that giant castles in the middle of various forests were perfectly inconspicuous places to live.

The insect drones watched the happenings of all the castles in Berlin, or near it, without suspicion. Magic users were accustomed to animal familiars, who could be located if one was skilled enough in detection magecraft. Artificial robots weren't even living creatures, much less magical in nature, which made them able to slip through the bounded fields of the castle without issue. Not a single person, magi or not, who saw the drones thought of them as anything more than everyday pests. Since bounded fields didn't stop objects or signals from passing through, the PWCD had been able to watch the inhabitants to their heart's content.

Finally, the PWCD laid their eyes on an interesting sight.

A Dead Apostle. One of their insect drones caught sight of a beautiful woman with red hair who was taking a bath. This would've been quite a pleasing sight for the black operations operatives if they didn't immediately notice that the woman was bathing in a tub full of blood. Surrounding the tub were all sorts of exotic candles, art painted in blood, art painted in actual paint and splattered with blood, and skulls with bloody artwork painted on them. The men and women watching the computer screens swiftly averted their eyes, nearly vomiting from the unholy sight.

That was as good a reason as any to dispatch the augments based in Germany.

xxXxx

* * *

A Dead Apostle Ancestor's location being reported to the church was no small issue.

When the PWCD sent the Holy Church their findings, there was an uproar. Given the description and recording, the Church immediately identified her as Rita Rozay-en or "The Artist". She was a Dead Apostle Ancestor who was ranked as 15th. She didn't have any outstanding abilities that the Church knew of, as she had simply inherited her place. However, she was said to take nightly blood baths and take great pride in her royal vampire status. The Vatican immediately attempted to seize control of the mission from the PWCD's hands and into their own. The PWCD vehemently refused, having already had a squad of some of their best soldiers en route to the castle. Even with assurances that the PWCD had accumulated enough experience against magi targets to effectively deal with magic in all forms, the Vatican simply refused tonot be a part of the operation.

The president of the PWCD and the Pope both went to placate their peers, knowing that infighting would only be counterproductive, all things considered. An alternative was reached instead. Rather than the mission being placed in the sole hand of any one organization, the Vatican and PWCD would run a joint operation.

Commando team Theta was to set up a meeting point 1 half mile outside the nearest church and 3 miles away from the castle in which Rita-Rozay-en resided. From there, they would be joined by a troop of 5 veteran executioners and 2 exorcists. This was so that the Vatican and PWCD could both get their soldiers to see firsthand how the other functioned, and further cement the military alliance they held.

However, since they already knew where the 15th Dead Apostle ancestor was positioned, and were capable of tracking her every move, they could afford to hold off on the attack in favor of building a more effective plan of attack then "Shoot your way in. Shoot your way out."

Contacting the German government and rolling out some special scanning equipment, the PWCD and Holy Church set out to mapping the vampire's castle and developing a plan of assault. If they were going to be killing one of the 27 most dangerous creatures to the human race, then they were going to do it right.

xxXxx

* * *

"_Hssssss..."_

4 months.

The Meta had been at this for 4 months, weaving in between Quincy patrols, harassing the Quincy's base of operations, and disrupting any attempts they made for large troop movements. The reiatsu powered humans were getting increasingly frustrated with their lack of progress in dealing with the creature. They could only find the Meta when it was attacking, and the Meta never lingered for long enough to be dragged into a battle of attrition. They either killed the opposition swiftly and fled, or did as much damage as they could and retreated. The Meta even made it a point to kill those who had gotten a good look at them, doing this so that the Quincy couldn't put enough information together from witness accounts to get an accurate understanding of them. Seeing as the Quincy hunter killer teams barely did anything different from the very first group they had encountered, the hybrid's plan was working.

But it wouldn't last. The Meta was able to kill 2 of the Stern Ritter, 1 being an ape man that could attack with sonic waves, and the other being a Quincy gun wielder. The Meta killed the ape man by crushing its windpipe mid-screech and watching it literally yell its own head off. The gun wielder was felled when the Meta got a hand on the man's weapon and forcibly pointed it down at the man's foot before discharging it. While the man was howling in pain at the loss of most of his toes, the Meta twisted the barrel of the gun up into the man's chin and caused it to discharge another shot at point blank range into his head. Both of these incidents were months apart, but the Quincy got increasingly desperate to kill the Meta when both of these events happened. Killing expendable foot soldiers was one thing. Methodically killing off the Stern Ritter, the elite and the backbone of the Quincy army, was dealing a much deeper blow.

But the Meta couldn't help but wonder about the point of it all. No matter how decisively they struck, how swiftly they killed, and how much execution they used, they weren't all that closer to bringing about the collapse of the Vandenreich. The host of human and hollow minds were in conflict once more.

The human mind acknowledged the impossibility of their task. They had set out to destroy an enemy organization and destroy everything in their paths. However it was abundantly clear that they had bit off more than they could chew. While their attacks did indeed tax the Vandenreich's ability to maintain an organized force, they were hardly close to collapsing them. The simple fact of the matter was that however easily a few hunter killer teams could be ambushed, or a particularly powerful enemy could be blindsided, that still meant that there were literally thousands more where they came from. While their efforts did plenty in the way of disruption, all they were doing was enraging their target group. Unless the Quincy leader and his Stern Ritter could all be eliminated, then the Vandenreich would remain unfazed by their losses.

The hollow mind advocated just the opposite. They may not be making any large gains, but they were steadily chipping deeper and deeper into the enemy force. Yes, they weren't nearly powerful enough to match a single Stern Ritter in a test of power. Then again, they were also pathetically weak compared to the zero and ninth espada, yet the both of them had been killed before they even had a chance to fight back. Just because these Quincy had an actual military strategic sense about them didn't mean they were any more capable of stopping them than the arrancar were. All they needed was more time and a bit more offensive power in their attacks.

So the two minds were stuck at an impasse. The Meta was a killing machine in an almost literal sense. It was like a battleship with 2 captains or a car with two sets of driver seats. The Meta only functioned when both the minds were in agreement, a design flaw that Aizen had designed in the event that he needed to rein his creation back in control. The Meta's original purpose for functioning, bringing about the destruction of the Vandenreich was now in question by the human mind, which left the Meta as a whole in a semi-hibernative state unless something from the outside threatened it.

As the two minds argued, they both came to the conclusion that there wasn't enough progress being made on the Vandenreich front. They also acknowledged that they'd eventually have to kill all of the Stern Ritter in order to make a serious blow against the Quincy army, and such a thing would be bordering on impossible for the Meta to do. Killing one or two Stern Ritter in a blindside attack or through quick kill methods was one thing. Trying to repeat this process on well over a dozen targets, all of them with their own unique powers which may catch him off guard, was beyond the Meta's ability. They also acknowledged that there were other groups out there who the Meta wished to destroy, other than the Vandenreich.

The PWCD came to mind.

The two minds began to mule over the possibilities of switching targets. It was clear that they weren't capable of collapsing the Vandenreich on their lonesome. It was also clear that the PWCD would be impossible for them to destroy simply by virtue of the black operations organization having an entire command structure, rather than any single and irreplaceable leader. However, the Meta actually could settle for just killing all of the PWCD's men rather than destroying them as a whole. After all, it was partially their fault that they were what they were now. Just as well, the PWCD certainly couldn't stop them if they came to attack. The PWCD's commandos and terminators were the only threatening units in the entire organization to the Meta, and both of those groups were extremely taxing for the PWCD to produce if its human memories were to be trusted. The two minds finally came to an agreement.

A garganta tore itself open on a gesture from the Meta, leading into the world of the living. The reiatsu spike would be picked up by the Vandenreich immediately, and there would be Quincy here in mere moments. The Meta silently promised the spiritually aware humans that they'd be back. Until then, they could entertain themselves however they wished.

The Meta leapt through the portal, closing it behind them immediately after he entered.


	17. Innocense

"_A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace"_ -Ecclesiastes 3:8

xxXxx

* * *

**Innocence**

The world, as of today, was a powder keg.

There were millions of beings on the planet, both human and non-human, who were all ready to go to war. The reasons for them all nearly coming to conflict were varied and widespread. No two groups completely saw eye to eye with one another. However, no one would back down. They all thought themselves to be the ultimate good, and that their reasons were best. They all believed they were in the right, and nothing could happen at this point to dissuade them.

Of course, there _were_ certain gray areas here and there. There were youkai who wished to fight on the humans' behalf, be it because of some bond they had with humans, or simply to be on the group who they felt stood the better chance of winning. On the far other end of the spectrum, there were humans who were prepared to fight for the freedom and protection of monsters; against other humans. Then there were the mercenaries, who didn't care that the world was burning around them, so long as they got a decent profit out of it.

Then there were the extremely odd cases.

xxXxx

* * *

The PWCD president almost spat his coffee out upon reading the mission report.

The U.S. government had caught wind of some sort of monster activity that was very suspicious. A security camera had just so happened to catch the shadowy form of a succubus flying off with a seemingly random person in the middle of the night. The person in question didn't resist or even call for help, which made the observers very speculative about what was happening. 2 days later another event occurred, this time with a Lamia being spotted in a public park at nearly 1 in the morning with a human Hispanic male, just a mile away from where the succubus had been seen. The security camera silently observed as the two beings went on to do...illicit acts in the middle of the night and in a public location at that.

From there, things only got freakier.

Finally confirming that there was a group of active youkai in the U.S. city of San Francisco, a PWCD covert operator was sent into the city to investigate, with a fully equipped team of augments ready to move into action within the hour. For seven days, that operator kept track of the supernatural activities that occurred in San Francisco. For those first few days, all was quiet. Then he finally caught sight of another pair of people, one youkai and the other human, walking hand in hand toward some sort of abandoned warehouse on the edge of one of California's beaches. Fearing that the human civilian was being led off to a silent place to be killed or worse, he called in the squad of augments to move in on the warehouse, but stay in hiding for the element of surprise.

What they saw when they reached the warehouse completely and utterly ruptured their minds.

It was almost like a cult. Inside the building, youkai in their true forms and normal civilians of all races and ethnicity were... pairing off. Some of them were just casually talking to each other, but others were actually taking partners or even entire parties with them and moving to fully furnished rooms. The warehouse wasn't very close to the city, and any nearby boats were well abandoned, so the occupants were free to make whatever loud noises they pleased. Something they took the liberty of doing. There was a single woman in particular who was giving something of a speech. His words went along the lines of "To counter hatred, we must love one another, regardless of what they are". It was impossible to identify whether she was human or not, but she was to be monitored just in case.

The PWCD agents returned to the nearest base, feeling...dirty. They had just witnessed an inter-species pleasure cult, doing all sorts of unnatural and disturbing acts to one another. When the personnel were debriefed, their superiors seriously thought that they were joking and couldn't possibly have been serious. What they were describing was simply too laughably implausible and debased for any self-respecting youkai or human to ever willingly engage in.

The observation drones they sent told a different story.

The PWCD and the U.S. government didn't really know what to do about the situation. Technically, the youkai weren't causing any civil unrest or threatening anyone. Likewise, there weren't really any laws that made people sleeping with non-humans to be illegal, since it wasn't actually classified as bestiality or anything similar. The very people in charge of deciding the course of action to these kinds of situations found themselves unable to even take it seriously for just how ridiculous it was. The youkai weren't doing anything wrong other than running the risk of being discovered, and the actual civilians involved didn't have any laws in place to restrict them from doing it.

The public probably wouldn't speak out against it if the local police force stormed and incarcerated all the members of the cult, but there still had to be a law on which a seizure such as that could be justified.

This was a situation that everyone felt there should be some kind of punishment for, but simply couldn't find any reason for anyone to be punished. There were certainly a countless number of taboos and tasteless behaviors going on, but nothing that would warrant any government involvement. So everyone made the unanimous decision to record the faces of all the people who appeared at this cult, get all of their legal information, and simply watch them under a microscope until something happened.

For the love of God, most of these people went back home to entire unsuspecting families after doing what they did!

The PWCD president tossed the report aside for a moment and massaged his temples with both hands. He'd seen people do a lot of things he considered weird and unnatural. After a certain point, he was sure that people would reach a level of debauchery where they'd stop and look at themselves and realize just how messed up in the head they were. Then they'd go and seek professional help. As he had learned today however, people would just keep raising the bar. He wondered how the past generations of humans would react to seeing society today.

"What's wrong with people these days?" He said to no one in particular. Getting up, he decided to take an early break.

xxXxx

* * *

"Congratulations Shark team, we're officially on our first mission." Jacob stated in a semi-professional tone.

"Yeah, yeah. We fly in circles and wait for a bunch of robots to tell us they need help. Whoopty freakin doo." Apache grumbled.

Sitting in the belly of one of the PWCD's N'jal carriers, Grave team and Shark team sat in wait. They were currently flying over Japan, which was a place of harsh memories for both the augments and the arrancar. After all, this was the very country that had hosted a grueling battle of attrition between humans, youkai, and spirits for several days straight. No one was particularly excited, as their mission was purely clean up.

They weren't the only ones though, as four other N'jal carriers had arrived on the scene. Two of them were carrying Trident team, Spear team, and their respective teams of arrancar. The other two carriers were packed with three Bunker suits and three more teams of augments. This made up the entirety of the PWCD's clean-up force in Japan. Some of those carriers were with the American military and pushing forward from the southern edge of Japan and working their way up. The arrancar and the squads assigned to direct them were with the Chinese military and working their way up Japan, from southwestern coast.

The process of retaking and resettling Japan was well underway by the time anyone from the PWCD got involved. The Chinese and American armed forces were doing a careful sweep of the entire country. Room by room, building by building, and block by block, the entire country of Japan was being rechecked for any non-human presence whatsoever. This was also a good environment with which to test the United Nations drone army, which a small contingent of had been deployed.

Their definition of "small" being close to 3,000 active and armed drones being sent out into Japan.

The PWCD's job was simple. The drones were going to scour the area for any living youkai DNA, which they would open fire on should they find any. China's and America's militaries would trail up behind the drones and flip over every single rock and check every hole in the wall for anything the drones may have missed. The PWCD's job was to send in specialists in the event that the drones and soldiers found something a little too tough for them to handle. Though the entire process was extremely redundant in everyone's opinion.

7 or 8 months had gone by since the war in Japan. It had been almost 4 months since a single youkai had actually been spotted in the city. The PWCD was vaguely paranoid of the Magi attacking again, but with them having lost two groups of enforcers in this country already, it was highly unlikely that they'd willingly put themselves in front of the guns of 3,000 drones, roughly 10,000 or so armed soldiers and vehicles, and an entire task force of PWCD super soldiers and arrancar auxiliaries. Any youkai they found in the area were likely to just be scavengers if anything. The PWCD had already thoroughly dealt with Fairy Tale as a threat, so there was no way they'd show up now. The last plausible threat at all would be the hollows, and they hadn't been seen in Japan since the war was still in motion.

Considering the Japanese refugees would be resettling the place within a couple months though, it was important that they be one hundred and ten percent sure that were no threats still in Japan. The extreme redundancy of a drone army, 2 separate military presences, and a PWCD task force all operating on a mission with an extremely low chance of any combat was well worth the effort. Really, the arrancar and drones were only there to use their abilities in a scenario where there was only a slight chance of combat, so that if they messed up, it wouldn't be as big a deal because there were additional forces there to counter and make up for any short comings on the latter's part.

Mila-Rose fell asleep again, to which Avery turned and nudged her with his arm to keep her awake. She tiredly looked at the African American augment with a glare.

"Why can't I take a nap? We haven't done anything but fly in circles for the past 2 hours!" The equally dark skinned woman complained.

"Gotta stay awake. If something happens, we gotta be ready to go in a heartbeat. Can't have anyone out there half-asleep while they're out fighting." Avery shrugged, taking his helmet off to get more relaxed. Mila-Rose fumed.

"But that's bull! From what Jacob said, we could be out here all day! We can't even take a quick nap?" Apache grouched, slumping over and holding her head in her hands.

"Nope. Regulations are clear on that one." Javier piped up, his helmet off with him smoking a cigarette. "We can talk, smoke, and do whatever to pass the time, so long as we can be ready for combat at the drop of a hat, but sleeping is a big 'no no'."

He paused when he noticed Apache staring at his head funnily, with her lips sucked in and her shoulders shaking.

"What?"

"Hey... check it out Mila-Rose... his head's shining!" Apache busted out laughing, which made Mila-Rose put a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing as well.

"Ha ha, I'm bald. Very funny." Javier dryly stated. Then he paused, seeing Avery grinning and shaking while trying to play it off. "The hell are you laughing at?!" Javier barked.

Finally losing control, Avery let loose a choked laugh at his squad mate's expense. "Sorry, I can't help it! It'd be one thing if you were normal bald. But you have that big muscly light bulb head. When she said it was shining, I couldn't stop _fucking laughing!_" Avery descended into another fit of giggling, which prompted even more laughter from Apache and Mila-Rose.

Javier unbuckled his seat belt. Avery noticed.

"Hey! Sit your Irish-ass down somewhere! Get away from me with that Newport! Jacob! _Jacob!_ He's threatening me with a tool of torture! Tell him to stop!" Avery howled in laughter, trying to push Javier away as he tried to touch his lit cigarette against Avery's hair. Apache and Mila-Rose couldn't stop laughing at their antics.

"Sit still Avery. I'm just trying to make your head shiny like mine!" The Irish augment growled in mock anger.

"Chill out, it's just a joke!" Avery yelled, looking to his squad leader. Jacob was tuning them out; daydreaming of a world where he was fishing back at home, and miles and miles away from all these people.

Sung-Sun sat quietly across from Specter, who was cleaning his disassembled M82 sniper rifle. After a couple moments of silence and tuning out their fellow squad mates, he finally decided to address her.

"Can I help you?" The augment asked in a slight German accent. Sung-Sun never broke her gaze, bringing up a hand to cover her lips. Specter cocked an eye at her odd mannerisms.

"Why do they call you Specter? All of your squad mates have actual names. You have an alias." She stated factually. Specter sighed, seeing that she was the type of person that was gonna try to grill him for his every secret and remember every single thing he said. He briefly considered ignoring her, but she'd just irritate him into responding otherwise.

"My real name could get some unwanted attention from certain parts of the world, even with all the cover-up work the PWCD did for me. It's better if I just drop the name entirely." Specter stated, before going back to scrubbing the barrel of his rifle until it sparkled.

"How can you be so indifferent as to cast away your name? For some people, their names are their life and their pride." Sung-Sun said, ignoring the sounds of Avery panicking as Javier pressed closer to him with the lit cigarette. Specter just shrugged.

"Names are just a sequence of noises. There was nothing attached to my name that I cared enough about to not give up." Specter explained, keeping a straight face as Avery yelped in pain as the cigarette lightly tapped his cheek.

"..."

"..."

Sung-Sun and Specter were both regarded as emotionless by the rest of their respective teams. The reality however, was that they simply withheld themselves from outwardly showing emotion. Even smiling was something that was nearly unheard of for them to do.

So they regarded it as their little secret when they both smirked at the sound of Avery yelling while being repeatedly jabbed with Javier's lit Newport. Of course, with the racketing laughter Mila-Rose, Apache, and Javier were making, no one noticed except each other. Shaking his head, Specter went back to cleaning his gun. Sung-Sun went back to staring at him in a way that would unsettle most people.

Eli and Harribel were calmly sitting side by side. They weren't talking or even listening to the rest of their respective squad's antics, just enjoying the relative peace. Deciding that now was as good a time as any to start up a conversation, Eli glanced over to where Avery was pressing the cold metal of his handgun against the burn marks of his cheeks.

"They're pretty animated aren't they?" Eli stated. Harribel shrugged.

"So it seems."

Eli frowned. It seemed that she wasn't in a very talkative move. Regardless, there were other ways to get a conversation out of someone, when idle chit-chat didn't work. He decided to try a topic that was a little more serious and wouldn't be easily brushed off.

"What's it like to return here?" Eli began, knowing he had gotten her attention when her piercing green eyes turned to meet his. "This is rather close to Karakura."

"I feel nothing." She said calmly. "That place was indeed the battlefield where we both fought just a few months ago. But now that the victor has been decided, I don't feel any personal connection to it."

"Really?" Eli asked. Most soldiers would be at least a little bothered by returning to a grueling battlefield where they had nearly died at. They'd be twice as bothered if they were returning to said battlefield in the presence of multiple ex-enemy combatants. "I know many augments that were mentally scarred in the fighting and left unfit for duty."

"Their experiences were different from mine. We may have been present on the same battlefield, but what they suffered through was likely very different from what I had." Harribel explained, turning to look off into space as if she was remembering something.

"I see. And what did you suffer through at the time?" Eli asked, genuine interest in his voice.

She turned back to look at him with her face hard. "I felt powerless. I had been placed at the brink of death and could barely even move to defend myself. When your commandos showed up, I felt nothing but shame. They looked down upon us like we were weak and spared us as casually as they could've killed us. They spat on my pride as a warrior."

"I take it that appearing strong to yourself and others is very important to you." Eli said, looking up at the ceiling to avoid the death glare Harribel fixed on him.

"The weak are abused, slaughtered, and manipulated like insects. I can't, and I won't, go back to being weak." The arrancar woman heatedly stated.

"Weakness is a relative term, Harribel." Eli explained.

Harribel folded her arms underneath her chest and encouraged him to elaborate. Something he did gladly.

"When you look at me. When you look at any human, augmented or otherwise, do you think of any of us as powerful? To a degree, everyone is weak in some way. However, everyone has strengths to compensate. There's no such thing as an all-encompassing strength or skill."

"In Hueco Mundo, there was only one kind of strength that mattered, and that was your power as a fighter." Harribel stated factually. Eli vaguely noted that their little disagreement was starting to get heated.

"Different strengths can overpower one another. I doubt there's a single human on earth devoid of any reiastu that can win a straight up fight against a menos grande hollow. But if that human were to make a homemade poison agent beforehand and get it inside the hollow's body..." Eli trailed off, looking back at her.

"That's a big 'what if' scenario Eli." Harribel stated dryly, all but rolling her eyes at him.

"Not really. The mercenary group 'F.E.A.R.' does just that in every mission, though I don't think they've encountered hollows yet. At least not to my knowledge." Eli smirked when he caught the way her face slackened and her eyebrows went up, signifying that she didn't expect that response.

"Hmm, maybe there is some truth to what you say." Harribel conceded. "I enjoy our conversations. They're very insightful."

"Thank you. There are very few people I know who think about anything in depth without relating it directly to warfare. Especially my fellow augments."

"They're stupid?" Harribel guessed, though she seemed to already have come up with an answer.

"Certainly not. They're just so ingrained in their lifestyle that they rarely think of anything else. They're plenty intelligent when they want to be."

"Well then by your description, they're already leagues better than the men I've met in Hueco Mundo." The Tercera said with distaste in her voice.

"Certain environments will make people do what they need to, so it isn't wholly their fault." Eli shrugged off. Before they could settle into another moment of silence, a thought struck Harribel.

"If what you said about strength was true, then how was Aizen killed? I've seen the explosions your nukes can cause, and Aizen once demonstrated his power to cause even larger damage before melding with the hogyoku." She posed the question because she honestly wanted to know how Aizen had been felled by human hands, but also to know how to avoid it herself.

"Aizen may have been able to produce larger explosions than a few nukes, but he wasn't capable of matching the damage they caused. Only another nuclear weapon can do that." Harribel's brow furrowed. That didn't explain much.

"How so?" Eli got comfortable, knowing this would be a bit long winded.

"Normal bombs kill people through either the initial shock wave, the heat they cause, or the chunks of metal they send flying everywhere. Nuclear bombs are different. While those other three threats are present, nuclear bombs are primarily designed to kill through fusing or dividing the target's atoms very rapidly. Aizen may have been able to withstand all the normal effects of a bomb, but the nuclear reaction tore him apart, atom by atom. There was no way anyone could survive that. It's apparently due to that 'hog-yoko' thing he had with him that we even found a whole body. Nuclear weapons also cause radiation, which can kill people years after the bomb already detonated, if they don't kill the targets immediately. So he had very little chance of surviving."

"Was that what we were hit with?" Harribel asked; curiosity and slight fear building up in her. If this was the same weapon that had taken out multiple espada and fraccion at the height of their power, all in a single and prematurely detonated shot, then she hesitated to know just how deep the damage of such weapons went.

"A significantly smaller one, yes. However, you were given treatment to prevent being killed by the after effects." Eli soothed. He knew full well what kind of thoughts were running through her head just by the way she had started looking at him. That look that had sudden suspicion in it.

"Hmm. How many of those does the PWCD have?" Harribel asked.

"I'm not sure if we still have any." Eli shrugged.

"What?"

"We're a black operations organization. We don't have much of a reason to be using nuclear weapons. The organization itself only had 1 or 2 for extreme emergencies. If a situation has gone so horrible that something needs to be nuked, we can get the nearest country with nuclear capabilities to do it for us."

"If these bombs are that destructive, why bother even going into battle at all? Why not just fire them at every single aggressor?" She asked.

"Because if we fire too many, we'll wind up destroying the entire Earth's surface and cover it in nuclear fallout." Eli shrugged again, acting as if that was the most natural thing to say in the world.

He looked over and noticed Harribel giving him a strange look.

"What?"

"LOOK ALIVE! DRONES HAVE ENGAGED A TARGET IN KYOTO CITY!" Jacob bellowed in his loudest voice.

The N'jal carrier lightly banked to the right, flying at full speed to Kyoto city, along with every PWCD carrier in the skies over Japan. The vehicles were on nearly opposite sides of the abandoned country, but they planned to rendezvous at Kyoto. While the carriers were in motion, Chinese J-31 falcons and American F-22 raptors quickly flew over the carriers, apparently having gotten a call to fight the same threat the PWCD were responding to. There was nothing quite like watching an entire flight of dangerous jet fighters flying overhead to let you know that shit was about to hit the fan.

All the augments immediately put their helmets on.

"What's the target?" Specter asked, quickly reassembling his rifle in less than 30 seconds.

"The drones caught some movement in a building and started lighting the place up. Whatever was in the building returned fire with a powerful direct energy beam and took out 37 drones in one go. I'll give you one guess."

"Hollows." Javier grunted, slapping a drum magazine of explosive shells into his AA-12 shotgun.

"Or arrancar that are still looking for a fight." Avery piped up, checking the magazine of his sidearm.

"It's possible." Harribel stepped in. "There were 200 arrancar that Aizen held in reserve at Hueco Mundo. I haven't heard much about their fate, so it could be a remnant force of some sort or a vengeful survivor."

"That can't be it. We had drones monitoring Hueco Mundo right after the shinigami showed up on our door, just in case we needed to cut off potential hollow reinforcements. All we found were dead bodies. Since we didn't move against them, we assumed the shinigami assaulted your base before being repelled." Jacob responded, casually bringing up the information with perfect clarity.

Harribel paused for a moment in surprise. "What? We took the shinigami off guard and drove them into the world of the living. Aizen stayed back the entire time we were attacking the Seireitei. It couldn't have been the shinigami." Harribel paused for a moment to think. The PWCD apparently didn't kill Yammy, Aaroniero, and the two hundred other arrancar present. The soul reapers were under too heavy an assault to have managed to do so. So who had killed the rest of the arrancar army?

The Tercera Espada was roused out of her thoughts when Avery patted her on the shoulder. "You can daydream later. Right now we gotta take care of business. Get your gear together."

"Gear?" Harribel asked, reaching back with her left hand and patting the sword sheath that stretched across her back. Avery was wearing his helmet, but he still managed to transmit an embarrassed look.

"Oh" the augment said. "Carry on." With that, he renewed his fiddling with his armor and equipment.

Harribel's mind went back to the war. Cirucci Thunderwich was a Privaron Espada, another group of arrancar who were among those to have stayed behind while the rest attacked Soul Society. Clearly she must've known what happened to the other arrancar, so why didn't she mention anything? Harribel had assumed that since Cirucci was brought in at gunpoint just like she was, then the other arrancar must've been killed and she was a prisoner they had taken. But now that she knew otherwise, she realized she needed to have a talk with the woman once the mission was over.

"We touch down in 30 minutes boys and girls! Any last minute equipment checks or prayers you wanna get out of the way, do it now!" Jacob called out, cocking back the hammer on his FN2000 assault rifle.

Avery fed a belt of ammunition into his infantry portable minigun, briefly aiming it at a spot on the wall to check the dot sight of the weapon. Javier was ready to go with his AA-12. Specter had his M82 nestled against his shoulder and ready for action. Finally was Eli, with his two three foot long swords and multitude of throwing knives. For the umpteenth time, the squad all paused to look at Eli and just stare at him for the fact that he wasn't bringing a gun with him, _again_. He proved time and again that he could make do with just bladed weapons however, so the PWCD higher ups never felt the need to say anything to him about it.

Of course, when Harribel, Sung Sun, Apache, and Mila-Rose all drew their own blades as well, Eli actually looked pretty normal in comparison.

The N'jal carrier lurched downward, signifying that it was dropping in altitude. The occupants of vehicle held tightly onto their seat belts, prepared for the worse. Hollow, arrancar, whatever; they were on a mission to find and eliminate the target. The PWCD had been pretty clear in their orders. Remove the threat in its entirety, do not allow the aggressor(s) to escape if feasible, and prisoners were only to be taken if they surrender before making any hostile contact. Any attempt made by them to engage will warrant a kill on sight order.

And for the sake of not causing any situations or disruptions, arrancar operatives should avoid being in the direct line of sight of conventional military personnel, especially during combat.

The PWCD carrier touched down in the middle of the streets of Kyoto, just a half mile away from where the drones were engaging the arrancar or hollow in question. The back hatch of the vehicle lowered. By the time light had started beaming through the opening, Grave team already had their seat belts unbuckled and were getting their weapons in hand. The arrancar of Shark team were just behind the augments, their zanpakuto already drawn and in their hands. They were going into a combat zone where danger would be around every corner. It wouldn't do to fumble to get your weapon in hand just in time to be brutally attacked by an enemy.

Jacob was the first to dismount from the aircraft once the back hatch hit the ground, dropping to one knee with his FN2000 up and ready. He was scanning and securing the area to ensure nothing attacked them while they were disembarking, or at least be able to provide cover fire if something did attack. Avery and Javier filed out right behind him, covering the peripheral areas of his vision while also getting on one knee to make themselves smaller targets. Finally Eli settled on Jacob's right while Specter moved up past the rest of the squad, his M82 scanning rooftops and windows for potential attackers. The sniper confirmed that there weren't any immediate threats and gave Jacob the all clear.

By the time Shark team had caught up with the augments, they were already finished with this process.

Jacob stood to his full height, turning to look down on the four arrancar behind them. They were by no means new to fighting and death, but as of now, they were about to get their first taste of real warfare. Or at least they'd experience it without being on the receiving end this time. The augment figured that this moment may even be a major event for them in the future, which could potentially affect the rest of their lives. He decided that it'd be criminal of him to not add some memorable words to complete the experience for them. Resting his FN2000 against his shoulder, he motioned in the direction they were to be going; which happened to be echoing with gunfire and high explosives.

"Welcome to hell."


	18. The Artist

"People love conspiracy theories." Neil Armstrong

xxXxx

* * *

**The Artist**

The Magus association had known something was afoot long before things had gotten to the point that they did.

Magus enforcers that were being sent out for vital cover-ups were intercepted and killed or captured. Sealing designates long in the sights of the Magus Association were suddenly being abducted or assassinated by conventional weaponry. The homes and workshops of a few semi-prominent magi in the Association were stormed and captured by non-magical human soldiers who were in no way associated to the Vatican. All of this was picking up as of the better half of a year. It was impossible to confuse the situation as anything other than deliberate attempts to attack and harass the magus community with extreme prejudice.

The Magus Association was typically never slow to respond to these kinds of situations, but this particular situation was different.

First and foremost, the Magus Association was backing off just to get a good read of the PWCD's abilities. Those augments of theirs had quickly grown into infamy in the magus community. They were considered barbarians by the upper class magi for their size, tactics, and non-magically aided physical ability. They were imposingly large, clad in imposing armor, and were apparently fast to a degree that even the most bodily enhanced magus killers, assassins, and enforcers were hard pressed to just keep pace with them. What made them really ominous however was that they not only used guns, but full scale weapons of war. Attack helicopters, bipedal tanks, and carriers were all observed to be supporting these human super soldiers in combat at some point or another. The only equalizer was that these augments were magically inept, and thus vulnerable to magus abilities such as brainwashing and mind control.

But using those abilities always required the user to actually be touching the target's skin, or at least make eye contact. The presence of large black armor and opaque visors made it impossible for such abilities to be put to use. And even if those weren't an issue, the PWCD's attack dogs only ever showed up when they were in the process of attacking something or someone, which made it almost impossible to plan against them or make any decent counters. The magus association was by no means unaware of the methods that firearm equipped soldiers used to fight. The magi in general may be very old hearted people, but they certainly weren't adverse to studying new methods of warfare when they became relevant and worth knowing.

The Clock Tower, Atlas, and the Sea of Estray were all generally disconnected from each other, but the encroachment of non-magical humans on the Mage's Association as a whole couldn't be ignored. They faced the very real threat of being forced into open warfare with not just the PWCD, but humanity altogether. The situation had long since escalated to a point that there was no hope of concealing or covering up the Mage's Association's existence from the government, but that would be acceptable so long as the rest of the general public remained unaware.

A lot of careful moves would need to be made to ensure that the following events be carried out smoothly.

The Magus Association felt confident in their chances at defeating the PWCD if it came to a singular conflict, but there was so much more to this than just them and the non-magical humans. The youkai species and dead apostles were facing the ire of the human world's super soldiers as well. Recent information indicates that a multitude of dead apostles and one of the lower ranked Dead Apostle Ancestors had been killed off by the super humans as well. After all, the augments of the PWCD didn't simply attack those they saw as immediate threats, but all non-humans who so much as hinted at having hostile intentions toward any humans. With such a definition to go on, any living being that wasn't a human or augmented human was a target, which was no small number of species to openly declare as enemies. Even the Holy Church never went to such extremes, and they had more reason to hate non-humans than most.

This could be greatly exploited. Such a mindset would no doubt surround the non-magical humans with enemies. Combining all these enemies would form such a potent threat that even the world subduing drone army that the United Nations was secretly building would be hard pressed to fight them off. The real issue wouldn't be to organize a combined front against the non-magical humans, but do so without somehow tipping off the PWCD or the Holy Church, who would no doubt go to war over such a plan.

The practice, study, and advancement of magecraft could not be compromised no matter what. If a few million or billion people had to die to ensure this, then so be it.

xxXxx

* * *

"Rita Rozay-en is certainly in there. The castle is surrounded with her bounded fields." One of the executors stated, watching the vampire's lair from behind the brush.

The PWCD and Vatican had delayed storming this area for a whole week so that the necessary equipment could be shipped out to the area. The PWCD had to get Germany to transfer a copy of the blueprints to the castle, repeatedly ensuring the German government that their operations and movements in the area would in no way be connected to them. Then the commandos had to be equipped with some high-explosives, rather than just going in with their armor, ammunition, and whatever weapons they had on them. They'd be fighting in closed quarters against vampires for heaven's sake. They would use whatever weapons they could get.

The PWCD wasn't prepared for this type of situation. When they wanted to assassinate a high value target, it was common practice to just have an assassin patiently wait outside the target's door. In addition to the fact that the PWCD had never dealt with bounded fields before, there were many smaller issues that would make using snipers pointless or impractical. This only left storming the buildings and having UAVs and drones in the air to track her should she flee the castle.

So the commandos began sharing information with the executioners and exorcists on what potential magical abilities that the Dead Apostle woman could bring to bear. Luckily for them, it appeared that this particular dead apostle had attained her position by birthright, rather than any actual ability on her part. While this made their job much easier, the members of the church still made note that as vampires, the dead apostles could turn back time on their bodies to before they received any wounds, infect others with their blood, use magic, and had a superhuman physical ability. The augments took note of this information, but noticed that the creature's description was surprisingly tame compared to their past conflicts. Even youkai vampires and mid-level hollows had more dangerous abilities than that. Of course, the dead apostles wouldn't have the PWCD nearly as concerned as they were if their species' powers were all the creatures could bring to the table.

"When we pass through the bounded field, she'll know we're here immediately right?" Theta Actual asked, taking a knee next to the executioner.

"Undoubtedly." The executioner quipped, not taking his eyes off the castle.

"Then we'll just have to announce ourselves won't we?" Theta 3 spoke up, holding up a black box with a red button on the side.

The rest of the group tensed. When that button was pressed, the attack would begin. The commandos and Vatican agents were going to make a two-pronged assault. Theta 1 and 3 were with the 5 executioners. Together, they'd rush in and hunt down the apostle. While this was happening, Theta 2 and 4 would be with the 2 exorcists, ready to intercept the 15th ancestor should she evade or slip by the group that was going in to hunt her. The local fly drones and UAVs surrounding the castle would be observing the operation from all angles, so to better ensure that the vampire couldn't escape without being spotted.

"This is Theta Actual to Theta 4. You ready to move?"

"Copy sir. The exorcists want to hurry and get on with it." Theta Actual gave his squad mate a noise of acknowledgment and turned to the leader of the executioners.

"Solomon, you ready?" The man in question glanced over to the 7 foot tall superhuman and nodded, his eyes hard and merciless.

"Purge the unclean." The executioners stated in unison. The commandos were somewhat put off by the chant, but shrugged it off. Some Special Forces groups had far stranger sayings then that.

Theta Actual looked to Theta 3 and nodded.

"Do it."

Theta 3 pushed the button.

xxXxx

* * *

The PWCD knew that the uses of drones were countless. They were cheap, efficient, and inconceivably convenient. They made excellent reconnaissance devices, automated defenses, and even replacement soldiers when need be.

As of today, gun emplacements could be added to the list of uses for drones, because a single camouflaged SWORD drone with a Javelin missile launcher sat in the bushes. The drone sat just within the bounded field of the castle, within visual range of the highest point of the tower. The fact that it was a lifeless and magic-less machine made it incapable of setting off any alarms. And with a grand total of 3 missiles, not counting the already loaded one, that machine posed a greater threat than most living magi did at the moment. With its fire-and-forget setting placed on 'top-attack' mode, the anti-tank missile would shoot 500 feet up into the air and abruptly come streaking back down on the marked target.

The target in question happened to be the Dead Apostle's room, which the fly drones had confirmed to be where she was currently residing. The SWORD drone simply waited for the order to fire.

*beep* *beep* *beep*

The drone pointed its weapon upward at an 80 degree angle. That was the firing order.

**FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!**

xxXxx

* * *

The augments and church members watched as a projectile shot into the sky. Not wasting the time to watch it strike its target, the men and women moved in.

"Go! Go! Go!" Theta 1 barked, standing and breaking into a run before the others even got a chance to react.

The 2 commandos quickly sped toward the castle at nearly 50 miles an hour. The executioners brought up their rear, their scripture laced clothing enhancing their physical ability enough for them to keep up. The black keys they were so known for came out, each of the executioners carrying several in each hand. The augments ran with their M8 Kondras up and ready to fire. For rifles that were designed to penetrate several inches of steel, they'd probably be overkill for any flesh and blood target. Armed with some of the most dangerous infantry portable weapons that any human could have, the monster hunters made a powerful force.

**BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!**

The Javelin missile struck the highest tower of the castle, detonating against the brick and blasting heat, shrapnel, and pieces of rock throughout the entire room that the 15th Ancestor resided in. If she were a human target she would've certainly been killed, but then again that was the whole point of coming after her. If such a weapon was that easily capable of killing one of the dead apostle ancestors, then some of the most effective soldiers in the human species wouldn't currently being converging on her position.

Of course, the SWORD drone still had 3 more shots, and was programmed to keep firing until the target was confirmed dead by either the commandos or the insect and UAV drones.

The group of 7 humans entered the bounded field, no doubt tipping off the 15th ancestor to their presence, if the anti-tank missile detonating in her bedroom wasn't a blatant indicator. Coming upon the castle gates, the commandos didn't slow their pace in the least. Rather, they sped up. Putting their full speed behind their already immense weight, the front gates may as well have been made of cardboard. The iron gates smashed open when the two commandos shouldered their way into the gates. The executioners followed behind them, trying not to be all that phased by the fact that supposedly non-magical humans had just bodied their way through a locked iron gate while barely even breaking stride.

The insect drones hanging around the castle must've caught sight of the 15th Ancestor, because the SWORD drone voiced its presence once more.

**FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!**

Another javelin missile came streaking out, though this one didn't go in an arc. Rather, it fired straight toward the castle in 'direct-attack' mode. The missile came flying into the window of the room directly below where the first missile had struck.

**BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!**

The commandos and executioners picked up their pace, realizing that the 15th apostle was on the move.

xxXxx

* * *

Rita Rozay-en was known for a lot of things. She was arrogant, merciless, and unapologetic. She had a strong sense of entitlement and wasn't afraid to engage in mind games with her enemies. One word that would never describe her however, was stupid.

She had only survived the first explosion because of the magical barrier she had surrounding her room. Had that particular precaution not been there, the missile would've blown her to pieces. Instead, the weapon was weakened enough by the magic barrier that it only managed to mess up her room and not actually send any shrapnel or stone shards into her room. The second missile she had survived purely by throwing up a prana field directly in front of her and moving to the far side of the room before the missile could detonate. Despite whatever healing properties and strength she had, her flesh was no more vulnerable than a normal human's. She needed to get out of this tower, as the 2nd missile had blown out that entire wall. A few more of those, and this entire tower would collapse in on itself and with her still in it.

Seeing no other alternative, the 15th Ancestor took a leap of faith out the tower and used reinforcement on her dress. Landing on the roof of her castle, just a story above her tower, she started running to the door on the far side of the wall. She was vaguely aware of something entering her bounded field uninvited, but in between being fired on by missiles and narrowly escaping with her life, she couldn't quite bring herself to really notice the intrusion.

xxXxx

* * *

The SWORD drone had a direct visual on its target, which was currently running across the roof of the castle to the nearest building.

Target acquired.

**FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!**

xxXxx

* * *

_Shit!_

The Dead Apostle Ancestor mentally cursed as she saw another missile shoot into the sky, this one coming straight for her!

Seeing no other option, the vampire jumped off the roof, barely avoiding the ensuing explosion as the Javelin missile tore a gaping hole into the walls of her castle. Brick and shrapnel went flying in all directions. Some of it struck her in the legs and back as she fell.

**BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!**

"_Gahh!" _The 15th Ancestor painfully choked out as she fell 3 whole stories to the ground. The earth rushed to meet her very quickly and not very politely. It took all of her will to not howl in agony as her already ruined legs hit the ground, sending fresh spikes of pain throughout her body.

She took a moment to calm herself and breathe, reversing time on her body so as to heal. Slowly, her body reset to before she had ever taken any damage, the shrapnel and rock pieces in her body being forced out onto the ground.

She stood up to her full height, finally feeling like she could take a moment to think.

xxXxx

* * *

The closest UAV was hovering directly over the 15th Apostle's location, and relayed the coordinates to the SWORD drone. The SWORD drone in turn, angled its missile launched to be facing the sky at a 60 degree angle.

Target acquired.

**FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!**

xxXxx

* * *

_Dammit!_

Rita mentally cursed again, sprinting at full tilt back into her castle. She only barely managed to get through the front door of the castle and close it before the anti-tank missile struck the ground at a few dozen feet behind her, where she had been previously standing.

**BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!**

She felt the shockwave from the other side of the door, but quickly got to her feet and started running. She knew that the missiles wouldn't stop coming any time soon, and staying mobile was her best bet to avoid them.

xxXxx

* * *

The SWORD drone received coordinates from one of the many insect drones in the castle as to the 15th Apostle's current location, which was now deep inside her castle, where missiles wouldn't reach her. Regardless, the drone attempted to fire anyway, not computing however impractical that continued bombardment would be.

Target acquired.

…

Target acquired.

… No ammunition remaining.

If it were possible for a machine to feel emotions, the SWORD drone would be crying right now.

xxXxx

* * *

The 15th Ancestor halted in her running, realizing that no more missiles were falling. What happened? Were her enemies out of ammunition? Surely no attacker clever enough to sneak within the boundaries of her bounded field and launch a surprise attack would fail to bring enough ammunition to kill an opponent like her would they? Maybe she was safe?

The wall behind her exploded outward as a massive form forced its way through.

Rita was barely able to take a step back before the giant raised a large weapon and snapped it up at her in less than a moment's notice. The vampire was forced to awkwardly duck out the way as a bullet longer and thicker than one of her fingers came streaking at her forehead. The giant fired again, aiming for her heart. This time she was forced to throw herself sideways to avoid the bullet.

When the first bullet she dodged hit the ground and exploded, she realized that she was in serious trouble. The second one hitting the wall and violently exploding only seemed to drive the point home.

The giant's next move was to start to coming at her while firing another shot from its gun. Because she had hurled herself back to avoid the second bullet, she was in no position to dodge the third shot, which would surely blow her in half.

With all the haste she could muster, she threw up another prana shield in front of her.

The shield held up as the bullet struck it and exploded.

The shield gave in when an armored fist toting a knuckle sheathed blade impacted it right after the bullet.

The 15th dead apostle was sent stumbling backward at the sheer force of the punch against her shield, before finally falling on her back. The armored giant didn't halt his advance at all, and slid to a knee at her side. She barely managed to roll her head to the side far enough to avoid the fist, which blew a 3 inch deep crater into the ground at the side of her head. The augment pulled his hand out of the ground and roughly grabbed her by the hair when she tried to barrel roll away from him. Swiftly standing to his full height, he hurled the woman against the wall by her hair.

The apostle painfully smacked against the wall, 50 million thoughts running through her head.

Rita knew that she was now in a brawl. There was no space for planning and calculating. Everything was happening much too quickly for her to completely process in time. Most of all, she only vaguely remembered anything about the past exchange she had just had. She had never been in a pitched battle before, much less a brawl like this. But if she didn't learn, this fight would be her last.

The augment raised his gun at the vampire and fired another shot. The 15th Ancestor nimbly ducked underneath the round, noting with relief that the augment's attempt to fire a 5th time resulted in a hollow 'click'. The 15th dead apostle ancestor went on the offensive and lunged at the giant, her fingers tightened and pointed so she could spear through his armor with her claws.

Theta 1 saw her coming and calmly landed a front kick in her chest.

The blow drove the wind from her lungs and took her off her feet, as her momentum carried her straight into the attack. The moment she got airborne, the augment ejected the spent magazine from his rifle. When she hit the ground, he slammed in a fresh 4 round magazine. When she quickly stumbled to her feet, he cocked back the hammer, took aim, and emptied out the entire magazine at point blank range.

_BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!_

Once again, her prana shield rose up to save her, the vampire desperately putting more prana into the shield than could be considered safe to use. Then she did something the commando didn't expect.

She fired the shield at him.

The augment, caught off guard, could only brace himself as he saw the barrier made of pure red energy come rocketing toward him. When the thing impacted, it took the augment off balance momentarily and made him fall on his butt, just before the energy shield dissipated into the air.

It was odd how causing something as little as a stumble and fall from her opponent had given her that much hope in winning this fight. Even if he would get up and attack her in moments, the fact that this giant wasn't invincible gave her the crazy idea that she may win.

From the same hole that Theta 1 had entered, Theta 3 and the 5 executioners entered, immediately locking their eyes onto the 15th dead apostle ancestor they had been so furiously hunting for.

She took off running, pointing one of her hands behind her back and blind firing beams of pure prana at her pursuers. She didn't need any more convincing than what she had just seen. Fighting off 2 executioners was a significant test of skill for her. Fighting off 3 held the very real threat of her being overwhelmed and killed. Fighting off 5 executioners and 2 of those armored behemoths all by herself was suicide. Perhaps if she had gotten the chance to get her mystic code, this situation would've been survivable, but she was nowhere near the armory part of her castle. She highly doubted she'd get there before something or someone caught up to her.

"She's coming your way Theta 2. Be ready to intercept." Theta Actual barked, quickly getting to his feet while avoiding the spells.

That meant her only hope of escape was to flee the grounds entirely.

The commandos and executioners rolled and dodged to evade her torrent of spells, but immediately gave chase once they realized that she was simply trying to cover her escape. The church members quickly stormed forward to catch up to the ancestor and hunt her down. Theta 1 and 3 stood perfectly still and took aim with their M8 Kondras, having a clear shot at her back.

_BANG! _

_BANG!_

The first bullet only managed graze her temple, which wasn't enough to cause the round to detonate, but did make her almost trip over her feet in surprise. The second struck her shoulder and violently exploded.

"GAAAH!"

Her entire arm came off, which was coincidentally the one she had been using to fire upon the church members. Stumbling briefly, she ignored the pain and ran at full speed, using her powers to regenerate her arm while she ran. The executioners nearly got within striking distance of her upon the stumble, but she managed to move just fast enough to stay out of their reach.

Then she spun and jumped, with both of her arms outstretched and powered with prana. A flurry of energy beams fired outward, scoring 2 hits on the executioners. Those that were hit where speared through by the powerful beams, though luckily none of the hits were in lethal places. One man was struck in the shoulder and the other in the side, both of them falling to the ground in pain. The ones that weren't hit had managed to evade most of the shots by dodging. This act slowed down the executioners just enough for Rita to reach the door on the other side of the hallway, which went back outside.

She barely got a few steps outside before she was forced to put up a force-field again. This time there were two exorcists, and they were firing upon her with... Bibles. Words and letters from the Bible were literally lifting off the pages and streaking at her like bullets.

She didn't get much time to think about it, as she was shoulder charged from the side by another behemoth, this one completely catching her off guard. She was knocked off her feet from the force at which the commando slammed into her side. She impacted against the ground just in time to look up and see another explosive bullet coming at her head. She barely managed to erect another magic barrier in time, then she made a second one to cover her side from the exorcists, who had just begun to fire at her again. Suddenly they all stopped firing.

A massive armored boot stomped down on her right shoulder, dislocating it. She barely even got a bark of pain out before she looked up and saw a fourth behemoth staring down at her, pointing a sleek gray handgun down at her head. She wasn't given the chance to beg, yell, growl, or do anything to resist. Theta 4 pulled the trigger once, being sure to aim directly in between her eyes.

This was the worst death the dead apostle ancestor could hope for. She was executed in moments, all her years of accumulating power and building skill being for naught. Her promises and dreams would go unfulfilled. There were no heirs to take her place. She had no legacy. She wouldn't die in a spectacular show of art and finesse, or even at the hands of her friend. She would die in the middle of a nameless forest, by the hands of people who she had never met before, in a location where no one may ever find her.

BANG!

And Rita Rozay-en, 15th Dead Apostle Ancestor, was gone.

Had she been able to think of anything before her abrupt death, she would've remembered the warning that Altrouge Brunestead had given her.

_You will be undone by the hunters of souls._

xxXxx


	19. Rising Tides

The Fall of Man is not an "If" but a "When".

xxXxx

**Rising Tides**

Akasha Bloodriver sat in the deepest confines of her castle, along with many of the ayashi clan leaders, gangsters, and mob bosses of the world.

Anyone who was considered a leader, or even a very prominent individual in the monster world was present in some way, shape, or form. Many of the youkai leaders from foreign lands had to use live videos from wherever they were located in order to attend. Others had to quietly sneak out to the vampire queen's castle personally. So long as they were present, it mattered very little as to how they attended. This was something that was in development for several months, and handled with absolute care. Akasha Bloodriver had written letters to all these people in secret, as any electronic messages could be traced by humans. Just as well, a mass migration of prominent youkai to a single location would've been noticed. It was for this reason that she encouraged those people who were capable of itto attend through live videos.

This affair could not be leaked in any way, shape, or form. If this somehow got back to the human world, it would spell damnation for the entire youkai species. But there was much more to lose if this meeting wasn't held at all. The queen of youkai vampires didn't waste a single moment in getting this meeting underway.

In a single large room, easily 30 people were seated in chairs. At least 60 or so more empty chairs were occupied with television screens that were showing the faces of many other youkai leaders and representatives. These were the upper echelon of the youkai species. From clan leaders, to mobsters, to youkai politicians, this was the leadership of their entire species. The snow princess of the yuki-onna, the masked king, the exorcist, the witch lord; all were present. For once in history, these individuals put aside their petty squabbles and dislikes for each other for the sake of achieving a higher goal. The situation before them now was completely beyond any one person. The current circumstances forced them to either stand together or fall apart.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you for coming." Akasha Bloodriver stated, projecting her voice over the entire room. All were quiet, as they listened to the words of the shinzo vampire. "I come to you all with dire news."

She went straight to the point, seeing no reason to dance around the issue.

"The humans have reached a point where no form of negotiation will get through to them. I have personally offered peace and reconciliation with humanity's leaders, and they have all but ignored my attempts. As most of you know, many of our kind were, and are still being slaughtered in South Africa by xenophobic militias. I have recently learned that not only does the United Nations not plan to intervene, but they are fully aware that a third party is supporting these murderous humans, and they aren't doing a thing to prevent this. Meanwhile, human operatives from an unspecified country have been sabotaging our attempts to fight against those militias with our own forces. It's abundantly clear that the humans are fully against us, and no amount of peace talks will change that soon."

"Then what do you suggest we do? Fight them?" A tired voice spoke out. Many people murmured and spoke out in surprise at what they had heard, turning to the source of the voice. The shinzo was surprised to hear the statement come from her ex-husband, Lord Shuzen.

The man had been broken by the time of the end of the war in Japan. Gyokuro, Akuha, and Kahlua, all people who were very close to his heart, had been mercilessly killed by the PWCD's soldiers. He couldn't bring himself to solely blame the humans for this however; as Akasha had warned him that this would happen should he have permitted Fairy Tale to go on with this plan of theirs. She even went as far as to tell him she would side against Fairy Tale should conflict break out. She told him time and again what he would lose if he didn't stop this. Now that every one of her predictions had come true and three members of their family were gone forever, he was left a broken man. He lived every day of his life knowing that he could've prevented their deaths by simply listening to reason. It cut him deeper than any wound he had ever received in battle. And as sad as it was, Akasha couldn't bring herself to pity him, as he had brought all this upon himself.

And much worse, his decision was the main reason this meeting was in session.

"We have only one option left." The Akasha simply stated, addressing him emotionlessly.

"War?" The masked king questioned, though he said it like it was a factual statement.

It only took a single nod from the vampire queen for the entire room to erupt into very vocal uproar. She looked out and saw fear, outrage, disbelief, anger, and a host of other emotions come from the monsters before her. She couldn't say she was surprised. She would've been of the same opinion as them just a few months ago as well. However, she had come to terms with the simple fact that once the humans felt slighted, that they would stop at nothing for revenge. It was only a matter of time before they came to attack the youkai species, whether the ayashi wanted to fight or not.

"It does not have to be this way. You yourself said that we can live in harmony with the humans." The snow princess spoke out from one of the television screens. "Why have you changed your ways after following them so strongly?"

It discomforted Akasha to have to vocally answer the question she herself had struggled with for so long. But she decided to answer the snow woman exactly how she had answered herself.

"I finally embraced reality." The shinzo spoke coldly. The room quieted at the statement. "Living in harmony and hiding in plain sight are two different things. We have never lived in peace with humans. We simply mimicked their appearance in order to hide in plain sight, and told ourselves that it was the same as acceptance. Now that our facade is gone, we've been excommunicated from human society and scorned. And when war finally comes, we'll have to fight, whether we want to or not."

"What do you mean?" The snow princess asked.

"A week ago, I was contacted by a group of people known as the Magus Association. At first, I had assumed they were a splinter group of the witches' covens. Instead, I had learned they were an organization that expanded across the globe in influence and power. They've recently been discovered and are being attacked by agents of the PWCD and United Nations. They even suspect that the Vatican is acting against them. They intend to organize a campaign against the humans for ultimate control of the planet. They came to me to enlist the entire youkai species as their allies in this conflict."

The room stiffened at that.

A war against the humans for control of the planet? Even Fairy Tale, the most bold and militant of monster organizations, had only aspired to wrest control of Japan from human hands. And while their plan had initially worked, they hadn't factored in the idea of humans from overseas moving to aid their fellow humans. The conflict between humans and youkai in Japan was a nightmare. The Fairy Tale members were an unorganized mess who were aimlessly attacking any humans in sight. When the humans counterattacked in force, the monsters were easily repelled, routed, and slaughtered with extreme prejudice. It was a somber reminder of why they had hid from the humans in the first place.

And now, the entire world was going to be engulfed in such a conflict, where the youkai would surely be pitted against humanity once more. Some of the monsters dared to hope that this 'Magus Association' was strong enough to win against the humans and make a world that was safe for monsters. After all, a group that could span the entire globe in complete secret from humanity had to be considerably powerful. However, 'powerful' and 'competent' were two different words with two different meanings. If this war wasn't handled with the utmost care and skill, then humanity's fantasy world would truly be realized. A world where the humans were the sole inhabitants of Earth, and monsters and magic were all non-existent.

"I informed them that I would see if it was possible. They told me that the youkai weren't the only species being harrowed by human forces. They informed me of some of the other groups they were assembling to challenge humanity's rule. According to them, with us at their backs, the Magus Association has potentially three different species at their backs that are prepared for war. All of them have prior experience fighting human soldiers and different skills to contribute." Akasha continued.

"What are these beings called, and where do they reside? What separates them from us youkai? You can't expect us to believe all this without proof." The masked king said, his multiple eyes narrowing.

"The Magus Association has invited me, along with a small entourage of my choosing, to their base of operations where the leaders of these other groups will meet as well." The shinzo stated, giving the masked king a pointed look. "I would be a fool to take such claims at face value, and an easily manipulated one if I didn't personally confirm these things."

"Do we even know the names of the other two secret races that this Magus Association claims to have already allied with?" The snow princess questioned again.

"The dead apostles and the shinigami. I don't know much about these dead apostles except for the fact that they're alien in origin and have been ruthlessly hunted by humans for as long as they've existed. I know plenty about the shinigami however. I'm almost surprised that they agreed to this. Killing living beings used to be something they were strictly against. They were present in the city of Karakura during the war in Japan, fighting _with_ the PWCD. I don't know what caused them to change sides." Akasha replied.

She noticed in the corner of her eye that the exorcist had stiffened at the knowledge that the shinigami were involved and apparently siding against the human population. He had already known about the shinigami long before the PWCD had ever gotten involved with them, but he never expected a day would come where they may actually fight humans on a global scale. She'd just have to ignore him at the moment. This last part was the most important.

"Whether you wish to admit this or not, the entire planet will soon descend into conflict and we will all be caught in it. I can't ask you to change your stances and become soldiers. I'm not that presumptuous. But when the fighting comes, you won't have the option of being neutral. I simply wish to know whose side you will be on when the fighting reaches you." The queen of vampires ended, looking out into the numerous youkai assembled before her.

The room was dead silent. No one knew what they should do now.

"If you stand by my side now, we stand a chance of at least forcing a stalemate with the human forces. If we achieve that much, we can force a peaceful agreement with humanity. Should we defeat them, we can forcibly subdue and neuter them from ever becoming such a dire threat again. If we fail, our entire species will be exterminated, down to every last man, woman, and child. If you wish to stand and fight, rather than cower in fear, stand by me!" The shinzo vampire's voice rose.

Slowly, everyone present stood to their feet. Some were more willing than others. Be it through desperation, hope, or any other reason, they bowed at the waist to Akasha Bloodriver, symbolizing their support and loyalty to her as their new leader.

Had the stakes not been so high right now, she would've actually been capable of feeling pride or accomplishment at winning her entire species' loyalty. As it was now though, she just viewed it as another step in creating the ultimate army to challenge the human war machine. There was no pride to be taken here, just a brief sense of accomplishment.

She'd be surprised if by the end of all this, even a quarter of these people were still alive, including herself.

xxXxx

* * *

The Meta quietly watched the scene unfold from behind the shadows of a semi-truck.

An arrancar under the Quincy's employ had tried to follow the hybrid to the real world. When the Meta escaped and closed the garganta behind them, the arrancar followed after the hybrid with its own garganta. The Meta was still curious as to how this arrancar had gotten so close without it noticing. Espionage and stealth were their specialties. While the Meta was certain of their ability to counter a potential ambush, the fact that they had unwittingly been placed in that position gave the hybrid reason to worry.

The Meta entered into the real world, and immediately hid upon sighting a force of drones sweeping the area. While the drone army was certainly new, the Meta was aware of what drones could do from prior experiences in its human life. The drones didn't pose a large threat on their own, but they were transmitting whatever they saw to a higher command, which would in turn identify the Meta as a threat the moment they were spotted and send a potent force to kill the hybrid. A fight in this situation worked against the Meta, as they had no well-grounded knowledge of the area or the enemy's forces. So they'd lay low and gather information.

The Meta's pursuer had no such foreknowledge to go on.

Moments after the Quincy employed arrancar entered the real world; it had been spotted by a single drone, which relayed the information to every drone in the area. As of now, hundreds of the machines were now swarming over the arrancar and forcing him to retreat. The arrancar shrugged off the petty machine gun rounds the airborne drones were hurling at him.

When one of the tank-shaped ground drones got a bead on him with its auto cannon and blew a chunk of his chest out, he was immediately on the run. The Meta wasn't surprised. Those ground drones were packing weapons most frequently used for shooting down jets, but could double as overkill anti-tank weapons if pointed at any ground target. They'd chew through any arrancar hierro that wasn't top tier. The air drones couldn't entirely be ignored either. Orifices weren't protected by arrancar hierros. Unless reiatsu was pumped into the eyeball to strengthen it, even the most low caliber bullets would go right through it and into the brain. The same went for the mouth.

The arrancar had barricaded himself inside a parking lot building, using the cramped area to prevent the ground drones from shooting him, and force the aerial drones into a space with very little maneuvering room. While the Meta was fairly impressed by the arrancar's sound thinking, they knew it was only a temporary solution. These drones were probably just a scouting force, maybe even a first wave of the forces for whatever army controlling them. And wherever there was an advance force, there was some form of support or back up only minutes away.

And right on cue, a squadron of fighter jets came screaming across the skies. If that arrancar got airborne for any reason whatsoever, it'd be picked off in an instant. Now that there were multiple aerial threats on the scene, the Meta knew for certain that this area was too dangerous for any continued residence.

The Meta felt the arrancar in the building cut its losses and opened a garganta. It was presumably retreating back to Hueco Mundo. Smart. No matter how essential a target the Meta may have been to the Quincy, no reasonable leader would send their agents to fight against a potential enemy force that knew nothing about them, much less an unidentified force with superior strength and a home field advantage.

The Meta suddenly became aware of four powerful reiatsu signatures appearing around the arrancar, all of them being arrancar themselves. At first the Meta assumed they were Quincy reinforcements, who would attempt to fight back against the drones here. Instead, the four arrancar turned their weapons on what the hybrid had believed to be their ally while the drones mysteriously pulled back.

The Meta decided to hold position and watch the events play out. This could be valuable insight.

xxXxx

* * *

"Jacob, that arrancar is attempting to escape through a garganta!" Harribel barked out to the leader of Grave team.

The 5 man augment team and 4 m-... er woman arrancar team were swiftly moving up the stairs of the building to get to this arrancar. Once the arrancar women were able to hone in on his signature, they were on his trail in a heartbeat. They intended to take the target alive, once they learned that it was an arrancar and not some sort of regular hollow. The rest of the PWCD's forces were closing in on the target as well, but Grave and Shark team had a head start by virtue of being closest to the stricken area. With the arrancar showing an even lower power level than any of the four women here though, the members of Shark team felt certain that they were more than enough for subduing this threat.

"Intercept him!" Jacob barked. He had wanted his squad to be there for backup, but now that the arrancar was retreating, that luxury couldn't be acknowledged. He gave Shark team the go ahead to sonido forward and jump the arrancar.

_Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! _

Not even giving a word of acknowledgment, Shark team sonido'd to surround the arrancar. Grave team double timed it up the stairs now that they knew the girls were up there and engaging the target on their own.

Harribel appeared directly in front of the arrancar, her fraccion-turned-squad mates appearing on all sides of him, all of them with their blades pointed at him. He was effectively cut off from going through the garganta now. He looked strange, with his mask fragment shaped like a bird's skull and covering the top portion of his face. He was in an all-white uniform, but it was nothing like what Aizen's uniform originally was. He was looking back and forth in surprise, as if he couldn't comprehend what was going on.

"What is the meaning of this?" He yelled in surprise.

"You are to surrender to us immediately or we will resort to using force." Harribel simply stated. She and the other arrancar were explicitly told to not engage in unnecessary conversation with enemies except to tell them to stand down and surrender, especially when those enemies were spiritual in nature. Giving up unnecessary information to enemies was a big no-no in the PWCD, unless it absolutely couldn't be helped.

"What do you mean? We're both arrancar! Surely, you wouldn't betray your own like this?" He tried to reason."

"Oye! You heard Lady Harribel! Surrender or we take you down!" Apache barked from beside the man, bringing her chakrams up against his neck.

"This is madness!" He hollered. Roughly pushing away Apache with his hands, he turned and tried to muscle his way through Harribel, who was standing directly in between him and the now closing garganta.

Big mistake.

The moment he took a step toward her, Harribel snapped a rear leg front kick to the arrancar's solar plexus and sent him stumbling backward. She took two steps forward and threw a hook punch with her free hand, aiming directly for his temple. The man dropped like a sack of potatoes, out cold. She hadn't even used her reiatsu to fuel the blows any more than what was considered average for an arrancar.

Harribel stood over the downed arrancar, impressed with her newfound martial prowess. Her fraccion looked surprised, not expecting their leader to floor their enemy so efficiently. They hardly even noticed as the garganta behind them finally closed up on its own.

Grave team finally ran up to greet them, having just made it to the scene. Javier, Avery, Specter, and Eli quickly fanned out over the area, more out of habit rather than any pressing threat. Jacob quickly locked on to the sight of the four women standing around a motionless body, presumably the arrancar. He also noticed Harribel unballing her fist and staring at her free hand with interest. He could connect the dots well enough.

"Good job Shark team. I presume he's not dead." The augment squad leader praised, walking over to get a better look at the trouble maker that Tia had laid out. He heard an affirmation from Sung Sun in response to his question, and only gave her an acknowledging grunt as he studied the target. Scrawny and not much to look at in the way of physical appearance. Then again, Ulquiorra was one of the most powerful arrancar 'alive', and he looked like a shrimp.

"Eli." Harribel called out, singling out the martial artist of the unit. The man turned to look at her with a curious expression hidden behind his helmet. She hadn't looked up from her hands or the arrancar she had knocked out this entire time. "You're going to have three new students."

There was a pause as he processed this information. "What?"

Harribel then looked at her three fraccion, who were just beginning to catch on to the meaning behind the Tercera Espada's words. "When we return to base, I expect the three of you to undergo the same training I am currently going through under Eli. It will greatly improve your fighting ability."

The three sputtered in surprise, trying to find a reason to disagree and not put themselves under the command of the guy that they thought was trying to kiss up to their mistress. However, Harribel left no room for argument. She had just subconsciously used these abilities of hers to drop an opponent when she normally would have had to overpower him with her reiatsu. And she hadn't even felt the slightest bit of difficulty in bringing the man down. If these were the results she had from just spending a few months under his teaching, then there was no way her fraccion would miss out on this training.

Harribel walked away from the body, sheathing her sword and moving around Jacob, hearing no argument from either her fraccion or the man she currently considered as her personal trainer. Apache, Sung Sun, and Mila-Rose all turned to look at Eli with glares. The augment looked back at them and shrugged apologetically. Just for the sake of trying to appear sympathetic to the three fraccion, Eli reminded Harribel that all the augments were trained in hand to hand combat and any of them would be willing to teach her and her subordinates. Harribel just gave him a look that silently conveyed the message to stop talking.

"This is Grave Actual to Command, the hostile has been debilitated and secured. It's an arrancar, so none of our bindings will work on it. Reinforcements are already on route to help secure the target. Orders?" Jacob spoke out, talking to the operation command team at the PWCD base of Japan.

All was quiet for a moment as the Grave team squad leader listened to the operator on the other end of the communication link relay his orders.

"Yes sir, we're more than capable of securing the hostile with what we currently have."

The rest of Grave team and Shark team quietly listened to Jacob's conversation, using his responses as a gauge for what their next assignment would be.

"I understand sir. We'll be there as soon as possible."

Everyone perked up as soon as Jacob turned around to relay the orders.

"Shark team, secure that arrancar. We're going to bring him back to base while the rest of the PWCD's task force continues overwatch on the operation to clear out Japan. The N'jal carrier is moving to pick us up on the roof of this building. Let's move."

"Yes sir." Everyone echoed, before getting to their assignments.


	20. Safehouse

The most dangerous enemy is the one you are unaware of. The deadliest weapon is the one that is never seen, never heard, and never leaves a trace. If you can't see a threat, you can't gauge it, much less adapt or prepare against it. It is through this concept that we use spies. It is through this concept that we use concealed weapons. It is through this concept that we ambush and sneak up on our enemies, even when we're easily capable of a direct confrontation. By keeping our enemies in the dark, we can strike debilitating or deadly blows to an enemy who would easily counter such attacks in direct conflict.

xxXxx

* * *

**Safehouse**

For Veltro, combat was a form of art. Every movement was used to set up your next attack or counter your enemy's. Every response and reaction was practically second nature, almost primordially ingrained. The world seemed to crawl at a snail's pace, and every sense was muddled together in perfect harmony. Everything was cause and effect. A gloved fist was thrown at him from his peripheral vision. Instantly, the brain recalled multiple different counters to this particular situation that were ingrained from constant training and chose the one that was the most convenient at the moment.

In immediate response to the attack, Veltro turned and pushed the fist to the side while simultaneously leaning to the opposite side. Just as the augment's right hand guided the fist past his head, his left hand swung around and clamped around the back of the magi's neck and pulled his head down. Veltro then took a small step forward with his right leg and swiftly brought his left knee forward. His armored kneecap drove into the magi's stomach.

Now his attacker was bent over in pain and left open to a myriad of follow ups. However, he wasn't alone as two more of his allies had regained enough sense to once again be an immediate threat. One of them was already in the process of hurling some sort of glowing crystal-like object at him. The other was just getting back to his feet.

Thinking on the fly, Veltro shoved the winded magus enforcer toward the one who was in the process of hurling a projectile. Upon seeing his ally come stumbling and flailing toward him, he hesitated and allowed his ally to crash into him.

The moment Veltro saw the enforcers make contact with each other, he was already rushing the one just getting to his feet. The man had barely enough time to look up before Veltro lunged forward and drove his left knee into the man's face. The man immediately collapsed back to the ground, either with a skull fracture and concussion or just a broken nose. Veltro wasn't sure which, but he definitely heard something crack. The moment the magus hit the ground once more, he was coming back at the two magi, who were just disentangling themselves from each other.

The one who intended to throw that crystal at him was the first target. He turned to see the augment coming in for an attack and hastily pushed away his ally, who was still in pain from the earlier knee to the stomach. The magus turned and quickly tried to flick the volatile crystal at him. Veltro got close and immediately grabbed the man's wrist with his left hand, and engulf the man's hand with his right hand, preventing any further use of the limb at the moment. Less than a half second after doing this, Veltro drove his shoulder into the enforcer's face, using his greater height and weight as an advantage. The moment the magi recoiled from the blow, Veltro released the enforcer's wrist and landed a harsh left elbow against the magi's temple. He then followed up by releasing the magi's crystal gripping hand and landing a right knife hand strike to the side of the man's neck. He then finished him off with a left spear hand strike to the man's windpipe, his armor clad fingers easily crushing the man's throat. He wasn't dead, but with his airway crushed he'd suffocate in minutes, maybe seconds depending on how winded he was thus far.

Before the magus even hit the ground, Veltro turned back to the man who he had kneed in the stomach earlier. He had just gained his bearings and was just beginning to move his body to respond to attack. Wasting no time, Veltro drove a back leg front kick to the area just to the right of his abdominal muscles. He was just a little too far out of reach for the kick to have put him on the ground, but it did land hard enough to cause the magi to stumble back a few steps and clutch his stomach.

Veltro took 3 steps forward, but looked to the side to make sure the magi he had landed a lunging knee on was still down. That very magi was getting back on his knees at the moment. That meant he'd have to drop the guy in front of him quick and go back to finish the other one off.

The magus enforcer before him was one who practiced practical magecraft. In other words, he built his magic around combat. This one in particular was specialized in hand to hand combat if his choice to willingly engage a 7 foot tall super soldier in close combat was any indication. He was the largest threat at the moment, and needed to be neutralized.

The enforcer swiftly righted his footing and got into a guarded Muay Thai stance which would make it a lot harder for Veltro to achieve any hand based killing blows. The augment came forward and immediately rammed his right forearm into the magus who blocked the blow with both his own forearms and planted his feet. Veltro then followed up with a left upper cut on the magi's chin, easily navigating between the two defending arms that had been too busy locking against his right forearm. The enforcer's head snapped back with a spew of blood and spittle exiting his mouth. The man was already dropping, apparently that punch having been enough to knock him out. However, Veltro wasn't aiming to put the magi down temporarily. The augment cocked his right hand back, took a step forward and landed the hardest punch he could muster right into the man's throat while he was still falling to the ground, putting his entire weight behind the punch. Rather than just crushing the throat, the neck completely broke. The magus wasn't taken off his feet, but he definitely flew backward quite a bit. He was dead before his head hit the ground.

And now that he finally had some decent breathing room, Veltro immediately slipped out one of his throwing knives from his hip holster and turned to the magus who had just managed to sit up on his knees and aim at the augment with his own dropped hand gun. Sadly for him, he was still trying to get a bead on the augment by the time Veltro had let the knife fly.

_Shink!_

The magus dropped right back to the ground, yelling in agony as he grasped at the knife handle sticking out of his shoulder. Before he could do anything else, Veltro quickly crossed the room and slid directly beside the downed magi. He yanked the knife out the man's shoulder and stabbed it into his heart. The magus had just enough time to give the augment a pained look before dying. Nothing fancy or pretty about the kill. Just whatever got the job done the fastest.

Veltro stood to his feet, going back to gather his dropped weapons.

He had originally been sent along with Albert Wesker to eliminate a troupe of magus enforcers who were moving out to massacre a family that they had been suspicious of having seen thaumaturgy. The magi had acquired some sort of safe house hidden in the woods that they would use as shelter while they completed their mission. Rather than let them be in a group when they were at their strongest, Veltro agreed to get the jump on them in their supposed safe house, while Albert Wesker jumped the 2 or 3 that were leaving the safe house.

However, the difficulty came in when he learned that one of the magi had set up some sort of magical alarm system, with which conventional means couldn't detect. So when Veltro crept into the house, believing he was being entirely stealthy, he was instead jumped by two magi with bladed weapons. The ensuing tussle caused his primary weapon to be destroyed and his side arm to be knocked out his hands. However, he had managed to whip out his side arm and shoot the man who had cut through his rifle, then broke the neck of the man who knocked his side arm out of his hands. Then the other 3 of the group tried to attack, with which he responded by kicking two of them back just before the third tried to sucker punch him.

The rest was history.

Veltro immediately began his return trip to the location where he and Wesker would get picked up, keeping his side arm up and ready in the event that there may still be threats in the area. Quickly moving through the other rooms to ensure that all the magi in the house were accounted for, he finally reached the door and opened it. He was greeted to an interesting sight.

An augment man wearing a thin trench coat over his armor was standing over the bodies of 3 magi, all of them laying face down in the dirt with multiple bullet holes in the back and sides of their heads. Nothing overly dramatic. He had just walked up behind them with a suppressed machine pistol and shot every single one of them in the back of the head before they had a chance to turn around. With all the ruckus Veltro had made when he engaged the targets, the other three of the group had come running back, leaving Albert in prime position to ambush them. They never even saw him coming.

"Clear on my side. How's yours?" Albert stated while walking over to his ally, sliding a fresh magazine into his weapon.

"House clear. Mission accomplished. All that's left to do is dispose of all the bodies." Veltro inwardly groaned at his own statement.

Contrary to popular belief, when specialized soldiers ran secret operations to kill a certain target or targets, they didn't always leave the body wherever it dropped. It took weeks for a full human body to completely decay in a forest, and months inside a building. If somebody were to ever chance upon those bodies, they'd likely contact some the government or some other authority who would gather and study those bodies. Having that happen would be unideal for a lot of reasons. Luckily, the PWCD distributed chemical firebombs to augments who would have to dispose of bodies in such a manner. Albert frowned but shrugged, already used to this thing by now.

"Help me drag all the bodies into a pile. We'll burn them when it gets dark out, so no one sees the smoke." Veltro continued, holstering his side arm.

Even for super soldiers, you always wound up doing more manual labor than actual fighting once you joined the army.

xxXxx

* * *

"_A year after the gruesome massacre that occurred in the country of Japan, there's a large influx of Japanese civilians flowing back to repopulate their homeland. Despite suffering an attempted genocide at the hands murderous and thoughtless monsters, the people of Japan prove their endurance by returning to their country just a year after the horrible event. The entire country has been swept from head to toe multiple times over for any sign of lingering monsters, or "youkai" as they've come to be known. Despite having thoroughly purged the monster threat from Japan, there remains a strong military presence in the country as China and the United States coordinate their defenses so to be better able to respond should a similar attack occur in the future. Back to you James._"

"_Thank you Kim. In related news, the production of military grade weapons across the world are up by nearly 12% more than they were last month. This is in direct response to the looming threat of these youkai and what possible other attacks they can launch. It would seem that ever since the peace conference that the youkai species held with the U.N., the weapons production has actually increased rather than decreased shockingly enough! Countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, and China, have lifted their gun ban laws and encourage that civilians either enlist or receive proper gun training and arm themselves. The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, plans to take it a step farther. Once Japan has been successfully resettled, he plans to implement laws that not only allow, but require that civilians arm themselves with firearms and take proper gun handling training. He vows that should such an attack ever happen again, the people of Japan will be ready this time._"

Click.

"_This year has seen the most work for private military companies in almost all of history. In one of the better known cases, armed operatives of the PMC company, F.E.A.R., were seen serving as a bodyguard detail for some of the royalty in India. Many are beginning to question as to whether this practice is fear mongering and war profiteering. In light of the conflict in South Africa however, which is practically on the other side of the world from Japan, this practice certainly can't be faulted. There's no telling where the next monster attack could occur, and everyone is getting ready._"

Click.

"_Many people are questioning the integrity of our world leaders. I mean, there's been a whole different species living under our noses for who knows how long, and we're expected to believe that no one ever knew they were there? None of the governments ever came out and admitted that they knew about the Youkai all along, but with all our knowledge of forensic science and tracking, it'd have been impossible for them to NOT know something was out there besides just us. What's worst is that had these creatures not attacked just a year ago, we never would have known! I'm forced to question if the people we're calling our "government officials" are really humans, both figuratively and literally. If they honestly didn't know, then they're incompetent. If they did know, and didn't tell us, then they've been lying to our faces for who knows how long. We're either dealing with a deceitful governing system or an incompetent one, and I honestly couldn't tell you which one of those options scares me more!_"

Click.

"_There has been a large boom in the arms industry as endless shipments of weapons are being sold all over the world. Due to the repeal of most weapons ban laws around the world, nearly everyone who can afford it is arming themselves. Militias and vigilante groups are spreading like wildfires as a direct result._"

Click.

The PWCD president was shaking his head as he flipped through countless talk shows and news stations on his personal TV screen, before finally turning it off. His mind began to wonder all over the place about just what he was dealing with.

He saw all this coming from a mile away, but hoped and prayed that it wouldn't. Now that it was undeniable what was coming next, he was doing all that he could to prepare. The tension was just going to mount until all out war finally broke loose. The PWCD was taking steps to prepare. They were gathering as much intelligence as they could from the Holy Church as for what to expect when dealing with the dead apostle ancestors and Magus Association. In turn, he supplied the Church with all the information they had about Hollows, Shinigami, and Youkai. The PWCD expected that the spiritual beings wouldn't get involved, but he still had a bad feeling about the shinigami regardless. The PWCD may have fought with them before, but that didn't mean anything now.

The president was also paying special attention to the rehabilitation and training of the arrancar. They were obscenely powerful foes before, but with proper training and support, they'd be unstoppable. Of course, he still kept the reserved commando teams and a secret supply of bio weapons nearby the sanctioned arrancar just in case. There was a fine line between showing trust and outright stupidity. If all turned well however, then the PWCD would have their own branch of spiritual soldiers ready to be deployed against high priority threats. Due to what the PWCD had learned about the Dead Apostles from the Church, the arrancar were going to be groomed specifically for targeting the top 10 ancestors in the event that conventional methods and failed, and their more unconventional methods (the assault terminators and commando teams) were too underwhelming. And if all else failed, tactical nuclear weapons were still an option. The church wasn't sure if using nuclear or biochemical weapons would be able to kill most of the top 10 ancestors, but they'd sure do something.

He could only thank that the Vatican were also preparing themselves as well. Last he heard, the Vatican had taken some of the PWCD's armor designs and were modifying them for their own uses. He didn't know any specifics about what they were doing to it, but he had heard that they were implanting more than a few of their magical scriptures and weapons into the armor designs. He couldn't help but visualize all sorts of crazy images of the boondock saints clad in powered armor and throwing black keys everywhere.

He had also learned that the Vatican planned to reveal themselves to the United Nations, completely. Due to humanity already being so angry and afraid of monsters, a major world power claiming to have been secretly hunting such beings for over a millennium in secret would probably be welcomed with open arms. Plus they'd be discovered by someone eventually, if the Magus Association's discovery was any indication. They may as well be revealed on their own terms. It would also make things easier in the long run if a war broke out and the Vatican didn't suddenly have to explain themselves in the face of an aggressive UN coalition army who had mistaken some of their operatives for magi.

With the United Nations organizing into a single organized coalition force, and the PWCD and Vatican building themselves up in the background, any form of conflict would be well in humanities favor. The only way any ab-human organization like the Magus Association or non-humans like the youkai could be a threat now, was if they all congregated into an organized entity. Of course, the PWCD knew this would be impossible. Youkai had trouble working together at almost any level, much less on a global scale, which immediately ruled them out. The magi had a well known history of being backstabbers to each other, so any organization on their part would be fleeting at best. Still, they were organized in the sense that they followed orders and had a chain of command, so they couldn't be completely waved off. And the dead apostle ancestors have so much bad blood with everything on earth that the idea of them allying with anyone but other vampires is ludicrous. The shinigami may be willing to ally against humanity, but with the present threat of nuclear retaliation, there was no way they'd chance it.

So any war that broke out at this time would be easily manageable, which left the president with enough breathing room to investigate into a few other concerns.

Of course, that meant that now the PWCD had to investigate into Hueco Mundo and figure out what was going on over there. The captured arrancar had been coerced to giving up all that he knew, and revealed that he was actually a member of this organization called the Quincy. A couple of covertly flown in drones had affirmed that there was indeed a military organization using Las Noches as their command center. No attempt to make contact with them had been made, but it was being debated by the top brass of the PWCD as to whether they should. After all, this organization appeared to be made up of humans with reiatsu manipulation abilities, or "Quincy" as they were called. That alone gave the PWCD a great incentive to make allies of them. However, according to what little knowledge the PWCD had on the "Quincy", this organization would almost certainly be gunning for the shinigami the moment they got a chance. Even the captured arrancar had attested to that much.

Still, the benefits of at least making peaceful contact far outweighed the drawbacks. Worst case scenario, they return the Quincy's arrancar and agree to stay out of each other's way.

xxXxx

* * *

A bird familiar sat in the trees, watching as Veltro and Wesker stacked the bodies of the enforcers inside the house.

Command had considered leaving the mansion be, just so they could set up hidden cameras and observe the area in case any more magi came through. However, they acknowledged that the magus association would probably deduce the fates of their enforcers and realize the PWCD were in the area. So they decided to simply burn the entire house down. It would serve to send a message to magus association when they discovered it. The message was that if they were so bold as to try and attack civilians while knowing what the PWCD's primary function was, then they'd be ruthless in hunting the magus association's operatives down.

Veltro pulled the pin on both of his chemical firebomb grenades and dropped them onto the pile of dead bodies. He and Wesker were out of the building long before the grenades exploded. The fire immediately caught against flesh, clothing, and wood, burning into the both the bodies and the floors of the house. Then it began spreading, eating away at the foundations of the house. The local government had already been made aware of the PWCD's mission and were already in the process of ensuring no one went near the burning building until the fire completely went out and had burned away all the evidence.

All the while, the Magus Association watched through the eyes of familiars. They could no longer deny the obvious now. The practice of Thaumaturgy was being threatened by these upstarts. As a result, the PWCD had to be eliminated with extreme prejudice. And when the Magus Association decided they were going to destroy something, they made sure to be thorough.


	21. Fear The Storm

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

xxXxx

* * *

**Fear the Storm**

The world was full of important events. After all, such things are to be expected when the world teetered on the brink of global warfare. The united nations were covertly building their forces up for total war with every single thing on earth they considered an enemy. The spirit world, monster world, and magical world were all preparing a combined front to challenge and defeat the human race. The Paranormal Warfare Contingency and Defense organization and the Holy Church were running counter-terrorist missions and preemptive strikes against those they considered imminent threats to humanity. There was so much going on that the lower level organizations were being all but ignored in the grand scheme of things.

This was the perfect time for F.E.A.R. to get active.

xxXxx

* * *

A large group of armed men with a woman leading them escorted a group of three prisoners into a castle in the middle of the woods. All three of them had their hands up and bags over their heads. They would've had their hands bound, but their captors didn't have anything to use for hand bindings. The 3 prisoners were silent and compliant the entire time. Whether this was due to the prisoners having resigned themselves to death or them being confident for some reason was unknown. Either way, it didn't matter. Once the youkai gang members delivered these three to the magus, their business was done.

The three men were brought into what amounted to the castle's living room and placed on their knees on the floor, directly in front of a man dressed in an expensive suit. The gang members lined up behind the trio of prisoners with their weapons aimed at them, since the lack of bindings meant they could move at any moment.

"So were these the intruders I was informed of?" The man questioned to the youkai group's leader.

"Yes." The apparent leader, a petite Chinese woman, responded.

Nodding in response, the man in the suit stood up, looking down on the three prisoners with a look of utter contempt. He, as a magus, had been aware of the sudden victimization by non-magical human kind. Magi were being assassinated left and right. While assassinations in of themselves weren't anything new in the magus world, the perpetrators were the cause of concern. Government agents, non-magical mercenaries, PWCD Special Forces, government aligned black operatives, all human groups that were trained killers were repeatedly seen to have been killing and abducting magi. It was no secret that magi, regardless of their allegiance, were being targeted.

There was little doubt that the three men in front of him were soldiers sent to kill him, just as they had done to countless others. And now he had them at his mercy.

"So, what were you doing sneaking around my abode?" The magus asked rhetorically. He was answered when the man in the middle began speaking, his voice surprising everyone in the room.

"_Challus Valiel. Guilty of abduction, human trafficking, manslaughter, torture, and a host of other deeds. All of them carried out against random civilians."_ The voice seemed artificial, fake even.

Curiosity taking over, the now identified magus stood up and reached out, pulling the bag off the head of the man who had spoken. He was slightly put off when the image that met him was that of a muscular Caucasian male, whose head was completely shaven. However, that wasn't the disquieting part. He wore an iron contraption that covered his mouth entirely and had straps going over and around his head to meet at the base of his skull. The mask was clearly for medical purposes, yet it gave the man wearing it an intimidating aura. Unperturbed by the looks he received from both the magus and youkai, he continued talking.

"_Given your actions, you know as well as I do why we have come."_ The undercurrent of killing intent in his voice was not missed, even with that contraption slightly interfering with his speech.

Challus paused for a moment, before chuckling to himself. "This is why non-magical humans like you need to be kept in line. You fail to appreciate the depths of hardship and experimentation that are required to further the practice of thaumaturgy. A few lives spent in the name of creating miracles are hardly worth notice." The magi proclaimed, making eye contact with the masked prisoner.

"_Your kind baffles me." _The would-be assassin began. _"Things like you have killed and harassed humans for who knows how long. Not only does your kind cause suffering and death, but take pride in it. You revel in it. Did you think that your kind would continue on like this forever, without consequences? Did you truly believe that there would never come a __reckoning?"_

Truly intrigued by the path of this conversation, Challus continued to poke fun at the man, thinking his threats were empty. "And I suppose that you were my personal 'reckoning'? Well then enlighten me. Was getting captured part of your plan to avenge my test subjects?" He questioned with a smirk on his face.

The man looked to his left and right, at both of his fellow squad mates before answering. _"Of course!"_ He stated as if it were obvious.

Nearly at the point of laughing at the absurdity of the situation, he decided to ask one last question before he had them all killed. "So what's the next part of your genius plan?"

There was a pause as the building seemed to rumble slightly. Everyone's attention waned as they began looking around for the source of the noise. Their attention was recaptured when the prisoner spoke again. _"Do you want to know how I got the call sign 'Bane'?"_

The lights within the entire castle died, the power lines having apparently been cut. Less than a second later, a door was heard being smashed open in another part of the castle. Challus' eyes widened in surprise at the noise. _More intruders? How'd they slip through my bounded field unnoticed? They must've followed the youkai gang in through the opening!_ His thoughts were cut off when multiple canisters blowing out tear gas smashed through the windows of the very room they were in.

Panic didn't even have a chance to set in as Bane swiftly got on one knee, twisted his torso around, and batted away the AK-47 pointed at him while the gunman was busy watching a smoke canister roll across the room. With his other hand, Bane grabbed the side arm strapped to the monster's waist, flicked the safety off, pushed it against the monster's chest, and fired off three shots at point blank range. The gangster collapsed to the ground, Bane relieving him of his weapon.

The other two men snatched off the bags on their heads, and immediately reached down and placed pocket sized re-breathers over their mouths and closed their eyes to avoid the effects of the tear gas. Immediately after doing so, they rushed forward and tackled the magus before he regained enough sense to flee the scene. Pinned beneath the weight of two grown men and now exposed to the tear gas, the magus thrashed fruitlessly to get free.

By the time the others in the youkai gang had realized that the tables were turning, the door to the hallway was suddenly kicked open. Men in all black clothing stormed into the room guns blazing. They wore old World War 2 era gas masks with white skulls painted over the masks. They also had 'F.E.A.R.' in big white letters going across the sleeves of their uniforms. Armed with assault rifles, pump-action shotguns, and sub-machine guns, the men fired on the youkai gangsters. With tear gas burning their eyes and choking their airways, most of the youkai didn't even manage to raise their guns in time; much less get a shot off. All but one of them was cut down in the hail of bullets, the exception being a Chinese woman who seemed unaffected by the bullet wounds she received.

Suddenly the Chinese woman blew a hole in the ground below her, whether from some kind of magic or monster ability, the humans couldn't tell. She fell through the hole effortlessly, evading the next salvo of bullets and escaping the gas chamber that was once the magi's room. Swiftly rushing over to the hole, several of the FEAR mercenaries scanned the pitch black room below, looking for a sign of the monster hiding inside. One of the men took a grenade off his belt and flicked off the pin with his thumb, letting the explosive cook in his hand for a few seconds to ensure the woman didn't throw the grenade back up.

"Fire in the hole." Grunted the man, just before dropping the grenade down the hole.

**BOOOOM!**

"Move! Move!" A man armed with a semi-automatic 12 gauge shotgun barked, just before jumping down into the hole. He was quickly followed down by three more F.E.A.R. mercenaries.

All the while Bane dragged the unconscious body of the magus out of the room. The tear gas exposure had caused him to pass out, and any longer exposure would likely kill him. Meanwhile the two men who had went in as prisoners with him were already outside the room, placing on proper gas masks and equipping themselves with spare firearms that the rest of their fellow mercenaries had brought for them.

In total, there were 15 FEAR operatives present on this mission, counting himself. There were three 4-man squads, one squad of which was in pursuit of the fleeing youkai. The 2nd squad was here with him. The third squad was camped outside with long range rifles to pick off any who escaped the castle or ran by a window they could see. Then there was him and his two men with him who had allowed themselves to be captured while wearing wires, specifically to take the magus alive while the rest cleaned up the youkai.

Perfect execution.

Bane turned his attention to one of the gas mask wearing soldiers jogging out of the room, carrying an M16 in his hands. He stopped directly in front of Bane, craning his neck up to look at the face of the giant man and giving a quick salute. Bane returned the gesture.

"_What was the affiliation of those youkai?"_ The leader of FEAR inquired, his mask altering his voice.

Unperturbed, the man responded, his own gas mask somewhat impairing his speech as well. "They're members of the Chinese Mafia. Ran by the Wong Family."

Bane pondered on the name for a moment, thinking about why that name sounded so familiar. Then it hit him. _"The Wong family? It is __to__ my knowledge that they shy away from human affairs. Why are they working with magi of all people?"_

"That was our thought too. But according to our contacts, there are multiple youkai gangs suddenly working with known magi. Something's going on here." The F.E.A.R. soldier stated, looking to the side in clear unease. Non-humans were bad enough to deal with separately. Now they were suddenly organizing in mass, and directly against human anti-terrorists and anti-monster cells. The Vinnell Corporation, a fellow Private military company and close allies of F.E.A.R., had their base of operations hit by a case-less and residue-less explosive, which was something only magi and youkai could do. The lack of traceability meant that the chances of finding the perpetrator were remote at best. But with this new development, one had to wonder if the Magi and youkai were working in tandem.

Bane gave no comment, letting the information sink in for a moment. Just before the soldier went back to his squad, Bane asked him a question. _"You got a good look at the Chinese woman correct?" _The soldier nodded. _"Did she, by chance, have several of pieces of signed paper adorning her dress?"_

"Yes sir." The man stated, wondering why the accessories on her clothes were worth any mention.

"_Dammit. Tell the squad to keep track of her, but avoid a direct engagement. They're chasing a zombie youkai that can possibly summon feral monsters like attack dogs. They'll need more than poison coated bullets to put her down."_ Bane ordered. The soldier nodded and ran back to his squad leader, relaying their commander's orders.

Bane did his homework when it came to monster gangs. The Wong family was well known for its tendency to use seals to reanimate the dead and call forth ayashi as attack creatures. It was their trademark. The leader of F.E.A.R. didn't know the seals by sight, or even how they worked, but knowing that their enemy was a fairly high ranked member from the Chinese mafia was enough of a warning. The mission wasn't in danger, and he doubted that the woman would follow them after her client had been captured and her men had been gunned down right in front of her. However, you didn't become and remain a major player in the private military world by leaving things to chance.

Bane looked back down at the magus he had come for, who was being bound and gagged by the two members of his team that had pretended to be prisoners alongside him. _"Take him back to the pre-set extraction point. If he shows signs of waking up, knock him out again. It doesn't matter if he gets a concussion or not. We just need his still living body."_

"Yes sir, Bane. But what are you going to do?" One of the men asked, speaking through his newly fitted gas mask while kneeling over the incapacitated magi's body.

"_The Magi is for our employer. We turn his body in alive and our business is done. But we need to know what's going on with this entire situation. We can't afford to be in the dark. And a captured higher up of the Chinese mafia would divulge all the information we need."_ Bane explained, rolling his shoulders in preparation. _"I'll need to borrow one of your weapons for a few moments."_

The two soldiers stood up, one of them hauling the unconscious soldier over his shoulder and handing his KRISS Super V over to his superior. Bane took the weapon and picked off 2 clips from the 6 or 7 on his belt, sticking them in his pocket. He cocked the hammer back on the weapon and pointed it down the hall to check the sights. Satisfied, he took the gun in a two handed grip and began jogging down the hall, activating the radio in his muzzle-like contraption to be able to communicate with those men of his who were already hot on the target's trail.

"_Time to hunt."_

xxXxx

* * *

Hollows were getting to be a larger problem in the human world.

The heartless creatures were flying through the skies over the Pacific Ocean in desperation and confusion. They were being repeatedly blasted out of the sky by multiple shapes that resembled winged pencils with eye balls just above the tips of the needle points. The aircraft flew in rigid and preset patterns, within stiff and near-seamless "V" shaped formations.

The smarter hollows were able to predict the patterns the planes flew in, and shoot a few of them out of the sky by firing ceros directly in front of their paths. Even still, the pencil like aircraft didn't break their formations and engage individually, where they'd be much more efficient predators. At least, they didn't initially. After the smarter of the hollows started catching on, and had shot down 8 of the pencil shaped aircraft, they all separated in a perfectly unified fashion, as if all thinking with a single mind. However even after this, the planes still flew in stiff flight patterns. They were just harder targets to hit now, because they weren't flying in groups.

These were Hunter drones, the newly invented cousins of the predator drones. Armed with 2 anti-tank missiles and a nose mounted turret each, these drones were cheap and easily mass produced. They were self-piloting drones that received orders such as when to break formation, when to attack, when to stop attacking, and other such issues. When stacked against piloted aircraft, they were jokes. They'd be easily outmaneuvered and shot down by any piloted aircraft, especially the new and high end ones. But just like the Predator drone, Hunter drones weren't purposed for the task of taking down aerial targets. Rather, they were meant for overwhelming targets both air and ground based. Their sheer weight of numbers, coupled with their aerial supremacy made them foreboding to watch, as multiple flights of them flew over enemy positions, darkening the skies with their numbers.

And it just so happened that they were perfect for dealing with hollow infestations, while preserving human soldiers and pilots. Because they were machines, they didn't have souls, and thus feral hollows couldn't comprehend them as threats any more than they could comprehend a rock as a threat. Only hollows with control over their minds could actually realize that the drones were a threat, and respond, but they weren't all that common to encounter among normal hollows anyway. Now that reiatsu could be identified on the energy spectrum, the drones were programmed to be capable of seeing hollows and target them. And because the United Nations had been secretly building drone hangers all over the world (mainly places that lacked a very strong organized military presence), the Hunter drones could be dispatched against hollows the moment they entered into the real world.

The heavy suits in the PWCD had essentially been made obsolete due to the Hunter drones being able to do their job quicker and cheaper. The only reason the PWCD didn't re-purpose all the heavy suit operators to being standard special operations units was that there was still the off-chance that Vasto Lorde and possibly even high level shinigami may show up, and the Hunter drones would be too underwhelming.

The hollows were made short work of. The group that had once been 20 strong was reduced to three, and a handful of Hunter drones were looping around for another pass. The feral hollows moved aimlessly, trying to avoid whatever it was that was killing them, but doing nothing to actually retaliate. They were gunned down by the nose guns on one of the three passing Hunter drones, the fast moving bullets tearing through the hollows' skin with ease. The one remaining hollow capable of seeing the drones as a threat fired a cero at one of the Hunter drones in the air, striking it in the tail and letting it helplessly flop out of the sky and take a nose dive into the water.

Then an anti-tank missile moving at mach speeds struck the hollow, blowing the creature into unrecognizable pieces.

"Good job. Call the drones back." A short Chinese man with a thick beard ordered.

Inside a military base along the coast of China, there were multiple men and women seated around computer screens, monitoring and directing the performance of the Hunter drones. Seeing as China had been the ones to put forth the concept of a drone army in the first place, they were given access to one of the largest drone hangers in the world. With a store of 500 Hunter drones, 3,920 whippet tank drones, and 215,000 dragonfire drones, they could single-handedly defeat 63% of the countries in the world, using only their drones (assuming drone hangers in other parts of the world didn't intervene). And the number of drones of all types and varieties being made was steadily increasing.

Of course, China was next door to Japan, so they were entirely justified in having an unmanned army that could deploy in scant seconds if need be. It'd definitely ensure that should a similar attack to the Japan massacre happen within that entire region, the tables would turn against the attackers rather quickly.

Yu Kon, the director and head of this drone hanger walked around the room, observing the progress of the Hunter drones as they made their return trip. He made it a point to oversee any and all drone deployments when he was able. They weren't too common of an occurrence, but certainly common enough that a vigilant eye was always needed. 32 drones had been dispatched. Only 24 of them were coming back. The cost for assembling a single Hunter drone was only 2 million, which was cheap compared to the piloted aircraft that usually cost around 15 million at a low end. War wasn't cheap.

Then suddenly an entire formation of Hunter drones got knocked out of the sky. The drones, lacking any sense of self-preservation, didn't respond to the threat due to the attacker not being visible on their sights. Yu Kon gaped as he watched 8 drones suddenly drop off the radar.

"Order those drones to attack whatever just hit them!" He barked, watching as the man in front of him started putting in orders to the drones through the keyboard.

The drones just started breaking formation when a shower of balas started raining down upon the drones, scoring hits on many of them. The handful of drones that had evaded the onslaught and managed to turn and face their attacker was struck once more with pinpoint accurate balas, the balls of reiastu smashing completely into the light aircraft like wrecking balls. The flimsy armor of the Hunter drones crumpled inward like soda cans on direct hits. Only a single drone was still in the air, and it just managed to get a lock on to its target, when said target suddenly slammed into the front of the aircraft.

The last image it saw was a hollow wearing damaged white power armor, cocking back a hand that held a charged cero. In a movement too fast for most people to see, the creature's hand went straight through the optics of the Hunter drone, killing the video feed.

Yu Kon, as well as everyone else in the room, was flabbergasted by what had just happened. An entire flight of Hunter drones had just been swatted out of the skies in mere seconds. Not even the most deadly anti-aircraft weapons could match that level of destruction. And the image that last drone had sent them was... disturbing to say the least.

And what was worst was that the creature in question had not only gone undetected when it showed up, but completely dropped off the grid right after. It wasn't emitting any traceable levels of reiatsu, and due to its nature as a hollow, it could fly by every military institution in China, but unless someone happened to spot it with ectoplasmic vision lenses, it'd pass by without notice. It was a threat that couldn't be tracked, and thus couldn't be found and destroyed.

It was like the manifested nightmare of every conventional warfare tactician ever born.

Yu Kon immediately got into connection with the Chinese government, informing them of this recent and worrying development. Creatures too dangerous or unpredictable to be handled by conventional armed forces had a group specifically built to counter them as well.

It looked like the PWCD's heavy suits would get some use after all.


	22. The Beginning

xxXxx

**The Beginning**

The city of London was rife with history. There were a multitude of preserved castles and monuments that were hundreds of years old. It was a place of great historical significance and meaning. However, it was also overflowing with lies, secrets, underhand dealings, and espionage.

The United Nations, stitching together information from captured magi, salvaged magus workshops, and several other sources, had found that the Magus Association was a worldwide power that had its roots dug deep into nearly all continents of the world. Not only that, but according to what information the U.N. had managed to accumulate from the various anti-magus operations of various countries, magi made a regular habit of doing inhumane experiments on the human population. Some of these atrocities made the brutal dismemberments that the Cartel liked to use seem almost petty in comparison. These actions could be described as nothing but pure evil, and the United Nations were determined to stop the Magus Association by any means necessary.

And now that they knew exactly where the headquarters of the Magi was, they'd come down hard on the ab-humans.

Of course, things weren't that simple. Launching a raid on the Clock Tower would be less than ideal. Many of the panel of the U.N. supported the idea of Great Britain's military taking a few divisions of drones, as well as augmented support from the PWCD to storm the Magus Association's base of operations. However, such a tactic would result in a slaughter. The British Museum undoubtedly had a myriad of measures to outside invasion, not including the untold tens of thousands of magi who dwelled within. In addition, an uncountable number of civilians would be caught in the crossfire.

Most of all, the plan for the alpha strike would have to be expedited if such an approach was taken.

Then the President of the PWCD himself stood up and gave a suggestion. He questioned the logic of the U.N. council by trying to go into the proverbial bees nest in order to kill all the bees? Why not use the same method exterminators used? Rather than trying to battle the magi in a head on fight, why not seal the building and form a perimeter around the British Museum under the excuse of a gas leak or radiation problem? Then once the entire area was cleared of civilians, turn the entire British Museum into a giant gas chamber. Minimal lives were at risk, and should the magi retaliate, they'd have to come into the open to fight the armed forces, rather than the reverse.

Many people frowned at the brutality of such a plan. It was heavily against war time conduct to use bioweapons, especially in the form of gassing enemies to death. And the projected number of magi within the British Museum meant that thousands of men, women, and even a few children would be killed by this method. It would be manslaughter on a level not seen since World War 2.

Yet, when one looked at the actions of the Magus Association and their untold number of mass killings, kidnappings, abductions, tortures, and murders, it was hard to deny that such a method was somewhat legitimate of a response. An eye for an eye wasn't always the moral response, but things were long past the point of civility.

When put to a vote, the decision was ultimately approved. The United Kingdom would take a division of the United Nations' drone army as support, and begin gathering all the necessary resources in order to enact this plan to smoke out the capital of the Magus Association. Simultaneously, the Sea of Estray and Atlas, the two other bastions that made up the Magus Association, would come under heavy assault from two separate U.N. coalition forces, both supported with drone divisions and PWCD augments.

While war was being waged against the Magus Association, the agents of the Church would be supported by the PWCD as they led a crusade against the Dead Apostles. The U.N. had taken it in stride that the Vatican was a lot more powerful than they had ever imagined, and deeply entrenched in the magical world. There was simply too much going on in the world for them to be upset by this point, and added strength only increased everyone's confidence in the success of this alpha strike. It was unlikely that the Vatican and PWCD would be able to completely subdue the Dead Apostle Ancestors threat, but they'd definitely be able force the creatures on the defensive if need be.

The final enemy to worry about would be the youkai. While there was some questionable activity going on between the Magi and several well-known ayashi gangs, there wasn't enough information to suggest the entire youkai species would go up in arms. In the event that such was indeed the case however, there were plenty of rapid response militias, drone hangars, and military reserves across the world for such enemies to be taken in stride.

Everything was being set up for implementation. The basic attack plan had been set up, and when any changes in the situation occurred, the alpha strike plan was loose enough to allow flexibility in how the armed forces could respond. The main issue of the plan was that humanity wanted to start off on the offensive and stay on the offensive over the course of this conflict. If the enemy couldn't get enough breathing room to plan a retaliatory attack, the civilians would be safe from harm. Following this format, rapid and repetitive assaults, as well as maintaining momentum against the enemy, was key.

In essence, it was the ancient World War 2 blitzkrieg tactic all over again. Only time would tell if this attack worked or not.

xxXxx

* * *

A giant fly-like creature that was the size of a man came buzzing forward, its mandibles dripping with a greenish liquid. Its 3 eyes were wide with excitement as its prey came closer and closer into reach. A burst of machine gun fire later, and the creature was on the ground, twitching as ichor oozed out of the holes in its head.

Bane walked up to the creature, looking on in interest as it thrashed its head from side to side. Ricin pulp was toxic to a deadly degree. The shock of it entering one's system was enough to cause a person to go into shock, and for their heart to stop. While Bane knew full well that ricin coated bullets were capable of bringing even the toughest of monsters down, actually watching one such creature die a slow and painful death was still the slightest bit intriguing. It was partly interesting, because Bane hadn't expected that ricin would work on insects, especially monsters.

Bane stomped hard on the neck of the fly-like ayashi, the chitin on the creature's neck cracking slightly at the force of the blow. Bane pointed the KRISS in his hands down at the insect's face, watching as it squirmed and tried to nip at the barrel of the weapon that was just inches out of its reach. The F.E.A.R. commander looked the creature in its beady and soulless eyes as he depressed the trigger. There wasn't the visible sight of panic and horror in its eyes as there was in the eyes of the many sentient beings he had killed, but the very act of killing a creature while looking in its eyes was its own reward in a sense.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The creature's struggles ceased.

Gunshots and inhumane death cries signaled to Bane that his men were engaging more of the monstrosities that this mafia member seemed to have an endless supply of. The beings that were summoned were more of hindrances than threats. F.E.A.R. mercenaries have a saying when it comes to fighting non-humans of any sort. "If it can breathe, we can kill it. If it can hear, we can kill it. If it can bleed, then it's already dead." They applied this mindset in combat, in the form of poison-tipped bullets and knives, flash bangs, poisoned gases, and bio warfare based explosives. So no matter how tough, swift, or hardy any creature they encountered was, there was at least one method always available to kill or incapacitate it. And when pitted against creatures that were just more dangerous than average wild animals, the PMC's had very little issue with dispatching the creatures.

When Bane saw a fire-breathing bull collapse in front of the door before him, the F.E.A.R. commander felt pride swell up in his chest. Not even the PWCD's mutant super soldiers were capable of killing as efficiently as his men were able to. And unlike the PWCD augments, they didn't need to sacrifice their own humanity to do it.

The F.E.A.R. commander poked his head out of the hallway, and immediately brought his head back as bullets started pelting the door frame he was hiding behind. He wasn't alone, as his men who were only a few feet down the hall from him took cover behind the carcasses of dead ayashi, extending door frames, flipped over tables, and anything else capable of stopping a bullet. Trained soldiers never fired down a hallway when the enemy was still firing. If you popped out, the enemy soldier already had his gun aimed down range and in your direction, while you would still be in the process of aiming. Rather, trained soldiers waited until the second after the firing ceased, or at least eased for a brief moment.

"Return fire!" The squad leader called out while lying on his stomach in front of the bull ayashi's body so it could provide cover.

"_Uzi. Extended magazine. Standard rounds." _Bane droned out to his men, not turning his head away from the direction of the bullets.

The moment Bane noticed her focusing fire on the F.E.A.R. operative in cover behind a wall rather than him, Bane popped out and let off a brief burst of fire downrange. He didn't take the time to properly aim at the woman. Just firing in her general direction was enough for her to flinch back into cover. And when she dipped back in cover, this left the rest of his squad open to return fire. Two of the 4-man team began creeping forward out at a crouch, while the other two began snapping off semi-automatic shots at the door frame she had dipped behind, so that if she came out, they'd have a clear shot or be able to force her back in if she tried to spray them again.

Bane gave a single warning out to his men_. "Tighten your masks."_

The men barely had a two second notice to adjust their masks to fit perfectly, just before their commander sent a mustard gas canister sailing over everyone's heads and into the doorway that the Chinese mafia member was hiding behind. It appeared that she had some special forces training, because the moment that the two F.E.A.R. operatives on over watch stopped firing to adjust their masks, she peeked out and was prepared to let off another burst of fire.

Then she saw the canister that was spewing orangish-yellow gas come flying at her.

She barely had enough time to cover her eyes with her sleeve before the gas canister landed in the room she was in and started filling it with gas. She may be a zombie, but that only meant that the mustard gas wouldn't affect her ability to breathe in any way. That didn't mean it wouldn't still burn her eyes. But now she was faced with a new dilemma. She had pursuers equipped with gas masks storming down the hall to kill her at this very moment, and the gas was burning at her eyes slightly, even while they were closed. She blindly ran forward in the direction of the nearest door she had remembered seeing.

Suddenly, bullets tore through her leg at the kneecap, sending her to the ground.

The zombie didn't actually feel any pain. However, that did little to alleviate the panic that was setting in. The mustard gas was burning at her eyes to the point of disuse and she had just been kneecapped. She also knew that the moment she moved to summon a new ayashi to her defense, they'd shoot her halfway through the summoning process. So left with no other alternative, she propped herself up on her elbows and rolled herself over on her back, looking at her assailants with a defiant look.

Bane strode toward her in long powerful strides, his gasmask wearing mercenaries falling into stride behind him with their weapons aimed at her. They may not know much about zombies, or even youkai in general, but the rule of thumb was there very few creatures that could survive a bunch of holes being poked in their heads by speeding pieces of metal. Even fewer could survive those pieces of metal being coated in poison. Ling-Ling Huang eyed the humans nervously, keeping conscious of the fact that her Uzi was sitting less than a foot away from her hand.

"Freeze! Hands up!" The soldiers started barking at her, while Bane simply stood there watching.

The four gas mask wearing mercenaries walked up on her with their weapons aimed at her. She sighed in acceptance and put her hands up, deciding to simply play along. One of the men got to her side and kicked away her Uzi from reach. Another man got behind her and put his weapon away before proceeding to bind her hands behind her back. The other two soldiers stood vigilant over her, waiting for the slightest indicator to open fire on her.

All the while, she and Bane were locking eyes. The man with the iron muzzle looked at her with a combination of condescension and contempt, as if the very sight of her angered him. Ling-Ling stared back at him, slowly turning her face into a gentle smile. Maybe she wasn't powerful enough in this situation to fight him, but she was certainly capable of forcing an opening or a slip up on the man's part by irritating or unsettling him.

"You went through a lot of trouble to capture me. May I ask why?" Ling-Ling inquired, once again wearing her signature smirk. She somehow managed this while being hauled to her feet, despite her left kneecap being riddled with bullets and oozing far too much blood for any living person to still be conscious while enduring.

_"You have valuable information. Information that I wish to make use of."_ Bane simply stated, before turning to leave, signaling to his men to bring her.

"And why should I talk? If you haven't noticed by now, I don't feel pain. Any torture you have in mind won't work." Ling-Ling called out to him in a sing song voice, despite the clear damage to her leg.

_"You will."_ Bane ensured. Then he turned to look at one of the men holding her arms. _"Silence her."_ One of the four FEAR operatives took a small band of cloth and wrapped it around her mouth, tying together behind her head. The other operatives proceeded to keep dragging her by her arms, while the other two made sure to keep their firearms leveled with her head.

Bane wasn't a fool by any extent. He knew an attempt at provocation when he saw one. And while he wasn't particularly quick to anger, the best way to shoot down such attempts was to shut the person up from the get-go. The PMC commander put a hand to the side of his mask, activating his radio.

_"All F.E.A.R. operatives come in. The target has been taken. We're pulling out."_

xxXxx

1 Njal carrier and 2 raptors entered China's airspace, quickly being identified and cleared by the nearby monitoring towers and patrols that dotted their way across nearly the entire eastern hemisphere of the earth. The PWCD warships were carrying some of the most well-equipped soldiers they had for dealing with spiritual beings.

When China relayed their images and relevant information to the PWCD of the Meta, the PWCD recognized it instantly. They had encountered the being at the battle of Karakura. Of all the arrancar and shinigami, whose powers were capable of leveling entire cities if left uninterrupted, of all the super powered hollows and behemoths that streamed in from Hueco Mundo, the Meta was the single threat that the PWCD feared the most.

The other spiritual beings were pure powerhouses, which were easy to rout and takedown with the proper assets in place. Spiritual beings were essentially walking WMD's that were easy to dispose of and neutralized before they powered up. The Meta was something far more lethal. It knew the PWCD's tactics. It fought and moved like a trained soldier, which was something that couldn't simply be imitated. It destroyed the PWCD's soldiers and war machines with an ease that horrified them. And what worried the PWCD the most was that it was completely unpredictable. It had seemingly killed as many arrancar and shinigami as it did the PWCD's men. It was an enigma with no clear purpose or agenda, but the clear drive and ability to cause horrific damage to whoever it targeted.

The very idea of such a being terrified the PWCD.

A task force had been assembled for the express purpose of finding and eliminating the hybrid. One of the new arrancar units were deployed for the operation. Alongside the trained arrancar, Grizzly squad from the Shock Trooper division was also deploying. Given the enemy they were fighting, the arrancar unit and shock troopers were the best units to deploy. The PWCD's commando division was incapable of fighting the Meta when it got airborne, the terminators were too slow, and drones were all but useless. Of course, there was a slight issue with whether or not the two units could effectively work together. The entire shock trooper division had been locked in vicious combat with the arrancar for several days straight after all. There was more than likely a bit of bad blood there.

Especially since Yuri Boyka would be leading the shock troopers in this mission.

The basic plan was simple. Flights of cheap target practice drones were flying all across the airspace of China, tempting the Meta to make an attack. The second the creature assaulted one of the drone flights, the raptors would be coming in hot. Even if they couldn't kill the Meta, they'd at least be able to stall or track it long enough for the shock troopers and arrancar to catch up with it. The PWCD didn't particularly like having to rely on head up firefights for the completion of a mission, but it was sadly the only attack plan that wasn't liable to end disastrously.

Unfortunately, until the Meta came out of hiding, Stark, Ulquiorra, Grimmjow, and Lilynette were forced to share space with a group of armed and clearly unfriendly super humans. They both may have been wearing similar uniforms, working for the same organization, and aiming for the exact same goals, but the augments certainly didn't see the arrancar as allies. With all the good men they had lost to the evolved hollows, and all the evolved hollows they had in turn killed less than a year ago, there certainly wouldn't be any notion of false civility here. Professional attitudes be damned.

Stark sighed while looking at a shock trooper, who was sharpening his cleaver sword with a piece of flint. The augment was looking back, out of the corner of his eye, thinking of the easiest ways to kill an arrancar in such a cramped area. Stark teased him by aiming his finger at the man like a gun and snapping it back like he had shot him. The super soldier scowled at him, pausing in his sharpening to make vague chopping motion toward the arrancar with his cleaver. Lilynette kicked Stark in the shin and told him in a hushed voice to stop antagonizing the soldiers.

Grimmjow was smirking wickedly at Yuri, hoping to eventually get a rematch with the shock trooper commander after their last match had ended unsatisfyingly for the both of them. Yuri gave the arrancar one glance and looked away in annoyance. The fact that he was expected to be around these things at all was aggravating in its own right. The fact that he had to actually tolerate their presence and attempts to provoke him, and not give in to the urge to break their teeth in was nearly unbearable.

Ulquiorra for his part simply sat quietly. Any looks the shock troopers of Grizzly squad may have shot at him, he didn't acknowledge. His eyes were closed and he was patiently waiting for their mission to begin. It was clear that the shock troopers were a few ill-phrased words away from starting an incident. Given what he had heard about the jet packing augments from other augments, he was surprised that they hadn't tried to kill them on sight.

The atmosphere wasn't exactly "welcoming", but everyone had the self-control and common sense to not start any infighting. When the Meta showed up, there'd be plenty of chances to vent any anger. Until then, the soldiers of the PWCD were capable of restraining any urges they may have had.

That didn't mean they had to like it however.


End file.
